Jacob Resneck, CoastAlaska

In this newscast:

• Residents of downtown Juneau tent encampment face eviction
• Togiak child accidentally fatally shoots another child
• Capital City Fire/Rescue to offer rides on new airport truck during open house

 

Juneau police are looking for a 28-year-old woman who vanished August 13.

Juneau Police Lt. Kris Sell said that Alexis Ashley Ehlers of Juneau hasn’t been heard from since being involved in a minor fender-bender.

“Ehlers has been distraught over personal issues and walked away from a very minor vehicle collision prior to the arrival of responding officers,” Sell said Thursday. “Ehlers has not communicated with her family since and they’re very concerned about her welfare.”

Police request that anyone who sees Ehlers to contact the department at 586-0600.

It’s still early days in the municipal campaign season, but one candidate has already quit the race.

Political newcomer Carole Triem wrote to her supporters Wednesday to say she won’t be running for a seat on the Juneau Assembly after all:

“After more thought and consideration I am ending my candidacy for the City and Borough of Juneau Assembly for the October 3, 2017 election. I am extraordinarily grateful to the many family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances that offered their many levels of support for my candidacy. I am especially thankful to my fellow millennials who had faith in me to represent their interests, priorities, and approach to our community, its challenges and sustainable future. I will continue to look for opportunities to be engaged in our community.”

Triem had filed papers Monday to run for an area-wide seat against incumbent Assemblywoman Maria Gladziszewski.

Gladziszewski will now run unopposed in the Oct. 3 election.

Triem didn’t offer a reason in her email for her change of heart. Nor did she elaborate when contacted by KTOO. But she did indicate she’d have her name removed from the ballot before the Friday deadline.

The two other seats in District 1 and 2 remain contested with both incumbents Jesse Kiehl and Debbie White facing re-election.

The three Juneau Assembly incumbents whose terms expire this year are seeking re-election and each race will be contested. Election day is Tuesday, Oct. 3.

An iPhone alarm in the city clerk’s office signaled the 4:30 p.m. Monday cutoff for filing to run for Juneau Assembly. Each of the seats will be contested. For Jesse Kiehl’s District 1, which covers downtown Juneau and Douglas, it’ll be a three-way race.

Former bank manager Chuck Collins is running for the first time since his unsuccessful bid for an areawide seat in 2001. This time he said he’s targeting Kiehl, who’s often overruled by the Assembly majority.

“I’ve known Jesse for 20 years and he’s a good guy,” Collins said. “But I just don’t agree with some of his stances on it and I’m much more aligned with some things that other Assembly members have agreed with that he’s stood against.”

Collins is staunchly in favor of extending the road up Lynn Canal. But he said his main platform is improving quality of life, which he said has declined due to crime and a visible homeless problem with people sleeping and loitering downtown.

“I think it’s time that we take our town back,” Collins said. “I’m not saying that they have to go anywhere or anything, it’s just that if they’re going to be citizens of Juneau then they need to be responsible citizens of Juneau.”

A second challenger has also filed to run. Loretto Jones owns a charter boat business. She’s also concerned about the face of downtown but for a different reason.

“One thing that we have to consider is that many people here in Juneau don’t want to go downtown due to the cruise ship industry,” Jones said. “And I worked in the Virgin Islands as a university professor and I saw the cruise industry, basically, made it very difficult for locals to want to be part of their community again.”

She’s agreed with Jesse Kiehl on several controversial issues including his opposition to the anti-camping ordinance and his skepticism over the road up Lynn Canal.

“I like Jesse, I think he’s a good guy,” she said. “I’m not running against the candidate. I think that there should be a change every once in awhile. Let somebody take a deep breath, they can always come back.”

District 2 includes the Mendenhall Valley, Auke Bay and points north out the road. Incumbent Debbie White is a real estate agent and often vocal proponent of initiatives rolled out by Mayor Ken Koelsch.

Her District 2 challenger is Rob Edwardson, an aide to Rep. Justin Parish. His positions on the road, the camping ordinance and streamlining local review of mines sharply differ from Debbie White.

“This time around I think I have something to offer based on my experience, based on my aptitude and I wanted to offer that up to the voters,” he told KTOO in a July interview.

There is also an area-wide seat currently held by Maria Gladziszewski, a manager with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. She’s being challenged by Carole Triem, an economic development adviser who also works for the state.

In an interview, Triem didn’t offer any specific differences from her opponent. Rather she just said she’s energized by the opportunity to run.

“There’s no time like the present so I think I have the skills and the passion and motivation and time and energy to devote to this now, so now’s the time,” Triem said.

The first Juneau Assembly debate is scheduled for 6 p.m. Sept. 14 in Assembly Chambers. The League of Women Voters is sponsoring it.

A former attraction in Thane is slated to be burned to the ground. That’s because the former Thane Ore House property will be the site of a park for Tlingit and Haida culture. A controlled burn will be held to train firefighters.

The Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska won its bid to redevelop the former Thane Ore House restaurant property in 2015. It’s the centerpiece of the tribe’s $7 million project.

“The Tlingit and Haida immersion park is a preservation of our culture,” said Annette Ulmer, an economic development officer with Central Council. The 3-acre site is actually two separate parcels. There’s a former restaurant owned by the city. And there’s a former Alaska Electric Light & Power Co. workshop. Ulmer describes the plan from a visitor’s perspective.

“You will enter into the first main building and it will have digital, virtual reality, a video that will explain about Elizabeth Peratrovich, the history of Tlingit-Haida people to give a true historical perspective.”

All of this will be built over the former Thane Ore House, a once-popular shoreside restaurant built in 1982. After the restaurant closed in 2012, the owners were evicted for not paying city sales tax. Ulmer said the tribe realized it had inherited a mess when it took over in March.

The structure was never built to code. Engineers found major structural problems. Black mold was in the timbers. And it looked like the former owners had simply walked away.

“Oh my gosh! We could not walk in there without respirators on,” she recalled. “When the city closed the doors they literally closed it and did not enter back into that building. So there was standing grease, there was food. It was just left in a real disarray.”

The original plan was for the building to be restored in the style of a traditional longhouse. Now the tribe says it will completely rebuild.

“There have been great memories for people who have come out here to the Thane Ore House when it was the restaurant,” Ulmer said. “But also look forward to the new opportunity you’re gonna see now.”

The property was originally built on state-owned tidelands that were later ceded to the city.

Port Director Carl Uchytil said it was quite a process for the city to take possession of the property.

“Docks and Harbors never really had the authority to enter the building until after the eviction process, and it takes awhile to make things happen,” Uchytil said.

The Docks and Harbor board decided last month to allow the tribe, which now holds a 35-year lease, to burn down the building.

This is a rare opportunity for Capital City Fire/Rescue. Officials said opportunities for controlled burns of structures are becoming increasingly difficult to find.

“It’s an excellent training training opportunity for all the brand new firefighters,” said Fire Chief Rich Etheridge. “Juneau’s growing up so much around everywhere that it’s hard to find a spot where we can burn a building that’s not going to endanger other buildings or put heavy pollutants in a neighborhood that’s going to affect other people – so it’s getting more and more difficult.”

The burn plan is still awaiting state permits. Once the building is cleared away, construction can begin to rebuild on the site. Public access on the beach will continue with five public parking spots.

The tribe said it hopes to create a new cultural destination for tourists in the summer and school children in the winter. The cultural park promises to be a prominent landmark from both the land and water.

“If you’ll notice when you come out to this property, there is only one way in and one way out for the cruise ships,” Ulmer said, “and they are pretty slow and this will be a beautiful scene that they will see, first thing.”

Under the lease terms, the tribe will begin paying annual rent of $8,600 for the property next year. It also agreed to pay a $1-per-visitor fee to the city. The tribe hopes to break ground before the end of the year.

In this newscast:

• The Bluejack gold mine in British Columbia near the controversial KSM mining complex begins operations
• NOAA researchers identify extremely rare whale species in the Bering Sea
• State ferry Tustumena returns to service after wasted steel took it out of commission in March