Business

Glacier Bay Lodge will stay open, at least for another 2 years.

Several weeks of negotiations between National Park Service and the current concessionaires ended yesterday. This resulted in a 2-year extension of the contract held by Aramark and Huna Totem Corporation.

“That will keep the Glacier Bay Lodge open, keep the day tour boat running, as well as other services that they provide in the park, such as the restaurant and the gift shop,” explains John Quinley, spokesman for the National Park Service in Anchorage.

He says the extension begins in January 2014. Before it runs out, NPS plans to put out a new prospectus.

Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve received no bids on its previous proposal for a new 10-year concession contract in January.

Based on conversations with Aramark and other companies about why they didn’t bid, Quinley says reasons include costs of operation and maintenance.

“We’re going to be relooking at those numbers and seeing if there are maintenance tasks that perhaps were overstated, if there were things that would better belong on the park service’s side of the ledger, ways to get that work done less expensively perhaps. So we have a lot of work to do to rebuild a prospectus that will get some bidders,” he says.

Glacier Bay Lodge contains 56 rooms, which accounts for about half the lodging available in all of nearby Gustavus, a town of 450 residents.

JoAnn Lesh is president of the Gustavus Visitors Association and owns Gustavus Inn with her husband Dave. She and the association have been working on keeping the lodge open since the end of March.

“Everyone said it couldn’t be done,” she says. “I’m very excited that we will get a chance to have two years of stability for our economy here in Gustavus.”

Lesh says the association is holding a luncheon tomorrow at Glacier Bay Lodge to celebrate.

At least one set of potential buyers appear ready to purchase and restart a Douglas business that was seized by the Internal Revenue Service, but it’s unclear if anyone else is waiting for Wednesday morning’s auction.

PP’s Douglas Inn was seized by the IRS this spring because the former owner, Patrick Peterson, failed to pay nearly a million dollars in federal back taxes that he owed since 1999.

State corporation and business records indicate that a new limited liability company was created in mid-July called South of the Bridge. James Williams, Arbe Williams, and Abigail Trucano all hold nearly equal one-third ownership shares. The Williams may be best known as owners of North Pacific Erectors, a general contractor that has operated for over thirty years in the Juneau area. South of the Bridge and North Pacific Erectors even share the same Douglas post office box as a mailing address.

Shirley Coté, director of the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, the agency that regulates the manufacture, possession, and sale of alcohol, said they have already received an application for transfer of a beverage dispensary license formally used by David Sanden at the Triple F Bar and Grill in the Mendenhall Mall. South of the Bridge LLC have applied to use the license at a business identified as Louie’s Douglas Inn.

Coté said a temporary liquor license could be issued after the City and Borough of Juneau considers the potential transfer.

They would have sixty days to protest. And then the board would make the final decision at a board meeting. And, quite possibly as soon as October 2nd which is the next scheduled meeting.”

Messages left for the Williams were not returned. So, it’s unclear when they hope to reopen the bar if they successfully purchase it at auction, or if they plan on any renovations or changes to the business.

Peterson, who also failed to file or pay CBJ sales taxes and make his required state unemployment insurance contributions while he operated the bar, indicated in an interview with KTOO in early July that he might try to get his business back.

The property, including the structure and the land, was recently assessed by the City and Borough of Juneau at $242,000 in value.

But any purchase of the property would not include the liquor license. Coté said Peterson already surrendered his liquor license in June. It would’ve come up for a biennial renewal this December.

Coté said the sale of liquor licenses are transactions that are usually separate from the sale of a bar or restaurant.

The property doesn’t necessarily go with the license. The license doesn’t necessarily go with the property”

Generally speaking, Coté said a beverage dispensary license could go as high as $250,000.

Licensees aren’t required to share with us what their sales price is.”

Such a high price for some licenses is because of the limited number that is issued based on municipality’s population. Juneau, for example, with a listed total population of 32,290 people, is issued a maximum of twenty-two licenses for restaurants or eating places to sell beer and wine on the premises.

And then there are eleven, authorized non-restaurant/eating place licenses of each kind.

It’s not eleven total. It’s eleven of each of the twenty-some licenses that they could apply for.”

They include a license for a club, pub, recreational site, common carrier, package or liquor store, and a beverage dispensary license for a bar to sell all types of alcohol.

The auction is planned for 11 a.m. Wednesday, August 21st at the Dimond Courthouse. Bidders need to register an hour ahead of time.

According to ground rules set by the IRS, the winning bidder must pay 20-percent of the price at auction, preferably with cash, certified check, cashier’s check, or money order. The balance is due by September 10th.

At least eleven liens totaling $997,188.16 dollars were filed against Peterson and his business. Most of that is for unpaid quarterly federal employer taxes, but roughly a quarter is for a Trust Fund Recovery Penalty, or an attempt to recover employees’ Medicare and Social Security taxes that the employer did not pass on to the federal government.

Professor Scott Schumacher, director of the Graduate Program in Taxation at the University of Washington School of Law, said it’s unlikely that the IRS will recover the full million dollars at auction.

Just get the best that they could. The IRS is acting like any reasonable creditor would and so they going to try to maximize their value on that.”

Schumacher is familiar with the process after working as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice Tax Division and later as a private attorney defending clients on tax issues.

After the auction, Schumacher said the IRS will still have up to ten years to recover the Trust Fund Recovery Penalty. Those liens were not filed against the business, but specifically against Peterson as an individual.

They would do that analysis to look at who is a responsible person, and they would start going after assets like bank accounts. It’s not something that they’d normally do (which is) go after vehicles and houses. But it’s usually bank accounts, salaries, things like that. Then they would attempt to get paid as much as they can.”

Schumacher said it’s also possible that Peterson’s attempt to sign over the property to a friend down south earlier this year could prompt either a criminal charge or a civil suit by the federal government for a fraudulent transfer to evade taxes.

A proposed marine shipping buyout of Northland Services by Lynden Inc. is one step closer to approval.

Though the two companies have third party competition elsewhere, Northland and Lynden subsidiary Alaska Marine Lines handle virtually all commercial marine shipping in Southeast. If they merged as-is, Lynden would have an illegal monopoly in Southeast, according to the Department of Law.

The department’s lawyers have  filed a plan in court that would leave Southeast Alaska with two competing carriers, but their operations would be intertwined.

The plan requires AML to assist Sitka-based Samson Tug and Barge with an expansion into Southeast. The specifics are confidential, but Samson would buy assets from AML, lease space aboard AML barges, have a guaranteed barge charter from AML during peak shipping seasons, and have the option to rent AML terminal facilities and storage in Southeast and in Seattle.

The filing opened a comment period that ends Sept. 27. After that, a superior court judge in Anchorage must decide if the deal can go forward.

The designer and creator of the popular line Kodiak Coats is moving on to leather and silks, and leaving Juneau.

After making her trademark coats in Juneau for more than a decade, Bridget Milligan is going to Washington state.

On the first Friday of September in Bellingham, she  will be showing a new line of clothes.

“I’m just going to do a splash,” she says.

For now, Milligan is looking forward to designing and making “leather coats and fancy dresses.  I’ve always had a fantasy of just sewing with natural fabrics some day.”

She will not be showing any Kodiak Coats.

“You know, I just finished a coat for a lady – a waterproof fleece lined coat — and it might be my last waterproof fleece coat that I might ever make,” she says.

A van of sewing machines, fabric, patterns and other stuff has already gone south.   She will sublet her work area, a large cutting table and a couple of sewing machines to Danielle Byers and Iris Benson. Byers has been working with Milligan for a while.

Benson says plans are evolving, but as a commercial fisherman, she’s thinking the two will make clothes that are  “durable Alaskan and heavy duty, but also with flair that’s fun to wear.”

That describes Milligan’s line of coats, but Benson says the new business on Marine Way will not be Kodiak Coats.

Milligan’s Alaskan coat was first created in Kodiak 25 years ago.  She’s originally from the San Francisco area, and first moved to the Bristol Bay region of Alaska.

“I wanted to spend the rest of my life on a camping trip, which I still want to do,” she says.

She traveled to Kodiak to have a boat built and stayed.

Milligan says her first Alaska coats were parkas for her kids made from Army Navy blankets.  Then came the Kodiak Coat.

“Just kind of started in my back yard, so to speak, making coats for people,” she says.

And the dory she had built became the logo for her company.

The exterior fabric of a Kodiak Coat is waterproofed with rubber.  Each coat is lined with warm fleece, has a hood, and zips high around the neck to keep out the wind.  The pockets are big and wrists adjustable – a very practical but stylish coat for the sideways rain in Alaska’s coastal cities.

About 15 years ago, Milligan moved her coat-making business to Juneau.

That’s about the time Michael Kohan of Juneau and a friend bought a coat to share.

“We’ve had a purple fleece Kodiak Coat.  When one of us is out of the country in Southeast Asia or some other places, we are able to use the Kodiak Coat for the person who’s in Alaska and then we trade it, whoever comes back to Alaska gets it again.  It’s worked out well for us,” she says.

With word of the store closing, Kohan was looking at Milligan’s line of summer dresses, tops and skirts. But she says her revenue these days is coming from leather.  Milligan is even dying the leather for the coats herself.

“And I made several wedding dresses this year and bridesmaids dresses with beautiful satins and silks and wonderful fabrics,” she says.

The problem with the Kodiak Coats is the need to make men’s, women’s and children’s styles in all sizes and colors.

“You just have to, you just can’t say ‘Oh I don’t make that size or I don’t have that color,’ you just have to do that. So maybe if you’re really lucky you get an hour a week to design something you’ve been wanting to work on for two months,”  she says.

Milligan started designing and sewing doll clothes by hand as child, so her grandmother bought her a sewing machine.

She says creating the patterns is the exciting part of the process:

But the sewing is so relaxing.  It’s like ‘ah, now I get to sew.’  It’s like what I’m supposed to do.

And she says “happiness is a (sewing) machine that works.”

Milligan says owning a small business requires a different mentality than working for someone else.

“I call small business owners the unemployable,” she says. “We’re just lucky we got something we can do.”

Milligan has tried to close her Juneau business before, but it didn’t last long and she soon started making the practical coats again.  And this time, she admits, her plans are “still evolving.”

Work began yesterday on a new downtown True North Federal Credit Union branch inside Foodland IGA. Next in line is welcoming Heritage Coffee Roasting Company.

The credit union will be located in front of the grocery store’s check stand area where the service center used to be.

True North’s Juneau area branch manager Jacob Parrish says the new location will offer a parking lot, better hours, and more services.

“It’ll be a full service branch so everything that was available at the previous one will still be available to members. Only this time, we’re also going to be putting a brand new ATM that’s going to have the ability to receive checks and cash for deposit.”

The current Court Plaza branch has three employees, which will likely increase to four at the new location. Construction completion is scheduled for late-September and new hours will be Monday through Saturday, 10 am to 6 pm.

Foodland owner Tyler Myers says his Washington-based company, Myers Group, also just signed a sub-lease agreement with Heritage Coffee Roasting Company to run an in-store café.

When Heritage Coffee opens up in Foodland, the grocery store will no longer run its current espresso department.

“It was just a matter of who was going to run the coffee shop and I felt that they could do a really, really good job and they felt it would be a great location for them and it seemed to make sense for everybody so we’ll focus on selling groceries and they’ll focus on being great at coffee,” Myers explains.

Myers says the current coffee stand employees have been given the option of either working for Heritage or staying with Foodland in a different department.

Heritage Coffee president Grady Saunders says the in-store café will occupy 700 square feet, a larger area than what the coffee stand is in now.

“It’ll just be mostly drinks and it’ll have its own seating. I think three tables and a bar with five or six seats in it. They’re putting windows in to look out into the parking lot. We’ll have wireless like we do in all our cafes and our basic design.”

This will be Heritage Coffee’s ninth location in Juneau.

Next to Foodland is 6,000 sq. ft. of empty space, which used to be part of Foodland Super Drug.

Gary Rosenberger is president of Foodland Inc., the company that owns the Foodland shopping plaza. He says Myers has expressed hopes of using the empty space to expand Foodland into a “one-stop-shop” that would include a pharmacy, the liquor store located next door, and the hardware store on the other side of the plaza.

“I’d almost rather have it vacant and wait for his stuff to come up than to give it away just willy-nilly, ’cause if he doesn’t have the room, he can’t do the work. I think his ideas are nice. They’re good layouts. I’ve seen what he wants to do. When you walk into the store you just got this freedom to go from one to the other without going into the weather,” Rosenberger says.

Myers says it’s undetermined whether he will lease and expand into the vacant space, although he says he is working on bringing a pharmacy into the store.

The National Park Service and Aramark are negotiating a two-year extension for a concession contract at Glacier Bay Lodge.

Aramark and Huna Totem Corporation, in a joint venture, hold the current 10-year concession contract which expires at the end of this year. Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve put out a prospectus for a new concession contract in January but received no bids.

Now Glacier Bay National Park superintendent Susan Boudreau says the park and Aramark are looking for an agreement that provides a business opportunity for the company and protects taxpayers’ interest.

“I’m very hopeful that a resolution will soon be forthcoming. Absolutely. The conversations remain fruitful and constructive,” Boudreau says.

Aramark is taking the lead on discussions with the national park, but Huna Totem CEO Larry Gaffaney says the corporation will remain a joint-venture partner if a two-year contract is negotiated.

Glacier Bay Lodge contains 56 rooms, which accounts for about half the rooms available in all of Gustavus, a town of 450 residents.

During a U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee hearing Thursday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski pushed National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis for a resolution.

“The people of Gustavus are notably anxious and stressed. If the concession doesn’t move forward, you really do have a situation where the town’s economy is threatened,” Murkowski said.

Boudreau says a two-year contract extension would make it possible for the lodge to stay open for 2014 and 2015, and allow the park to conduct a feasibility study for a new 10-year prospectus.