Business

Long-time retailer and a Nugget Mall anchor tenant is moving to Mendenhall Mall.

Nugget Alaska Outfitters will take over the space most recently occupied by Gottschalks.

NAO managing partner Ron Flint says the move will increase store space from 11-thousand square feet to more than 15-thousand.

The new store also will have an external entrance; NAO now has access only through Nugget Mall.

Flint says he’s especially looking forward to greater warehouse space and a more efficient shoe area.  He says he doesn’t expect to add many hard goods to his inventory.

“Right now it’s taking us a long time to get merchandise into stock and it’s partly because our back rooms and storage areas are so jammed up and just too tight. So this creates some inefficiencies,” he says.  “We’re going to add at least a thousand square feet on the sales floor. At some times, especially in the winter, the racks get pretty close together in here and hard to get around, so hopefully it will help alleviate some of that.”

Flint says the renovation is already underway, and he expects to make the move toward the end of September, when his Nugget Mall lease comes up.  He has signed a five-year lease with Mendenhall Mall with an option to extend.

Loveless/Tollefson Properties of Bellevue, Washington owns Nugget Mall.  Ted Tollefson says he just found out last week that NAO will be moving out.

“We’ll be talking to national tenants.  We have a couple of options and I don’t know which one it will end up being,” Tollefson says.

Two national chain stores Petco and Office Max moved into Nugget Mall last year.

Flint is the son of the late Bill Flint, who started Nugget Department Store in 1974. It downsized to the Nugget Men’s Store after national chain store Lamonts moved into Juneau. Lamonts went bankrupt, reorganized then sold to Gottschalks. That chain moved to the JC Penny space in Mendenhall Mall, but went bankrupt and closed in 2009.  The space has been empty since.

In the meantime, NAO has continued to add more outdoor clothing and gear for the family. Though it’s not a cooperative, Flint calls it the “Southeast Alaska version of REI.”

This weekend, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council voted to put new restrictions on the Gulf of Alaska trawl fleet in an effort to curb chinook salmon bycatch.

There was almost certainly going to be a cap. All the other trawl fisheries had one, and concern over the health of Alaska’s chinook runs has only increased in recent years. The question was just how much chinook salmon could the Gulf’s trawl fleet take unintentionally before they would have to pull up their nets and stop fishing, period.

In the end, the number was 7,500 salmon. Here’s council member Bill Tweit, who represents the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“Certainly, the extent and depth of the chinook conservation crisis right now gives us no choice as a council but to respond with a conservation measure.”

The move wasn’t without some disagreement. Bycatch in the fishery has fluctuated between 3,000 and 10,000 fish over the years. Conservation groups wanted a cap near the low end, while fleet representatives pushed for a limit closer to historical highs.

The Gulf of Alaska trawl fleet is made up of around 50 vessels. They fish on things like cod and rockfish, and they deliver that product to seafood processing plants in communities like Kodiak. Fleet representatives argued that a lower cap would put them at serious risk of fisheries closures, and that the economic harm would spread to the coastal towns that handle their catch.

Council Member Roy Hyder, with the Oregon Department of Fish and Game, was sympathetic to that argument.

“The person in Kodiak that doesn’t get called by the processor to work on a line is the person that’s going to pay the biggest price.”

But council member and Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Cora Campbell responded that salmon fishermen had already experienced plenty of economic damage, and that a policy that wouldn’t have required the trawl fleet to change its behavior wouldn’t have been fair.

“If you set the hard cap at a level where it would not have constrained the fishery in the past 10 years, that is not a balanced approach. That is not sharing the burden of conservation between the trawl fleet and the directed salmon fishermen. What that is doing is ensuring that the burden of conservation continues to be shouldered entirely by the salmon-dependent users in the terminal fisheries.”

The council ultimately approved the hard cap on a 10-1 vote. It’s expected to take a year and a half before the policy is formally adopted by the federal government.

(This story has been updated with a different photo)

A Sitka-based barge line hopes to return to serving Southeast by the end of the year. It depends on a shipping-industry shuffle, where a much larger company is trying to absorb its chief competitor.

Samson Tug and Barge used to do a lot of business with loggers and mills around Southeast Alaska.

But as the timber industry shrunk, the line’s service area moved farther west. The Sitka-based company now carries cargo to and from Seattle, Prince William Sound, the Kenai Peninsula, Kodiak, King Cove and Dutch Harbor.

The list could expand – later this year.

“We started in Southeast, we still have our headquarters in Southeast, so why not be in Southeast. It just makes sense,” said Samson Tug and Barge Vice President Cory Baggen.

“We’ve looked at entering the Southeast market over the years. But with two carriers in the region there really hasn’t been room for a third,” she said.

That number could shrink later this year.

Lynden, which owns Alaska Marine Lines, is in the process of buying Northland Services. The two lines handle the lion’s share of cargo shipments to Southeast communities.

Samson does some barging to and from Sitka. Baggen said the purchase allows her company to compete in other communities.

“Our plans right now are to serve Ketchikan, Juneau, Wrangell, Petersburg, all of Prince of Wales Island and Metlakatla,” Baggen said.

Northland’s barge line will continue to exist as a Lynden subsidiary. But operations will be combined in Southeast towns that both serve.

The purchase has to clear a number of hurdles. Among the concerns: The combination could effectively create a monopoly.

Lynden CEO Jon Burdick said that’s why his corporation supports Samson’s Southeast expansion.

“There is a regulatory review process and the state of Alaska wants to ensure that where there’s competitive overlap between Lynden and Northland, that there’s alternative services available,” he said.

Burdick said buying Northland expands Lynden’s service area to Western Alaska, as well as Hawaii.

But he said Lynden’s Alaska Marine Lines subsidiary will not reduce Southeast port calls.

“At a minimum, they’ll receive equal frequency of service. In terms of equaling what AML’s doing now or what AML plus Northland’s doing now? AML plus Northland,” he said.

Burdick expects most Northland employees will either keep their jobs or find new ones with Alaska Marine Lines or Samson Tug and Barge.

Baggen said her company will be hiring.

“Eventually, we’ll probably double our size, probably have somewhere between 120 and 160 employees. … Most of those employees will be in Alaska,” she said.

Baggen understands her company will compete against a much larger operation.

She said Samson will do that by providing personalized customer service.

“We’re not the box-box carrier. We’re not going to be the one that says you better do it at this time in this way. We don’t care how you want to do it. We’re going to say, hey, what do you need and we’re going to do the best we can to come in and really work for the customers,” she said.

Both companies expect the sale to be completed by the end of this year.

And both say they’ll be ready for a quick transition.

About 3.4 million Filipinos live in the U.S.; 25,ooo  in Alaska.  The Ambassador of the Philippines to the United States says it’s continually growing.

More than 3,000 Filipinos live in Juneau, “roughly 10 percent of the Juneau population,” says  Jennifer Ruth Gomez Strickler.  As KTOO reported, Strickler was sworn into office Monday night as the first Honorary Consul of the Republic of the Philippines to Alaska.

Most people know her as Jenny, but once you’re appointed to a government position, complete names are required as well as “all kinds of background checks. And I swear that now the Philippine government knows more about me and my family than anybody else,” she says.

Strickler knows Juneau’s Filipino community well; she served as vice president then president of the incorporated group for a decade.

She will serve a three-year term as Honorary Consul to Alaska.

Raphael Castanos worked on the project for two  years.

“We tried so many years ago but we were not successful,” he says.

Castanos credits Connie McKenzie, a former aide to Congressman Don Young for planting the seed this time around, when she asked why Juneau had no honorary consul.

The Philippine government operates ten consulates across the country.  The San Francisco Consul General has jurisdiction over Alaska  and seven other states as well as Northern California and Northern Nevada.

San Francisco is a long and expensive trip from Alaska for passport or other document services, so years ago the San Francisco Consul began visiting Anchorage.  Now he also visits Fairbanks, Kodiak, and in 2010 started coming to Juneau once a year.

Strickler will handle many of the paperwork issues Juneau Filipinos and visitors may encounter.

“It’s very much like a liaison between the Filipinos here and the San Francisco office,” she says.

Marciano Paynor is San Francisco General Consul.  He says as Juneau’s  honorary consul, “she’ll be able to do visas, do legal documents that need to go to the Philippines, authenticate signatures, and the most important thing that she will be doing is what we call assistance to nationals. So any Filipino or Filipino American can seek help from her.”

But that’s just the paperwork.  Philippine Ambassador to the U.S., Jose Cuisia, is looking forward to economic ties between the state and the Republic.

Strickler joined Juneau Rep. Cathy Munoz and Bethel Rep. Bob Herron last fall on the  first official Alaska legislative mission to the Philippines. The Ambassador calls it a good first step.

“They’re also talking about establishing a sister-city agreement between Kalibo, Aklan.  It’s one of the cities that’s very tourism oriented, similar to Juneau,” he says.

The University of Alaska Southeast and Aklan State University are looking at a faculty exchange in fisheries. Strickler says a  seafood festival between the Philippines and Alaska is at the top of her list.

She is retired from the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development, has written grants for the Juneau Filipino Community, “and one of the things that really excite me is I can facilitate projects between state of Alaska and the Philippines,” she says.

Paynor also is looking to her to help establish a Filipino emergency management team in Alaska, in the event of crisis “so that we can immediately respond or help people throughout the state”. she says.

As Honorary Consul to Alaska, Strickler is truly an honorary employee. That is, she’s a  volunteer, though Paynor says she will be able to keep 50 percent of the fees she collects for document services to operate her office in the Juneau Filipino Community Hall.

He flashes a wry smile as he explains.

“Basically it’s a volunteer job.  So we thank her a lot for volunteering for this job.”

The long awaited entry of telecommunications carrier Verizon into the Alaska market is now happening.

The company announced it is about to light up its 4G LTE network in the more urban parts of the state and begins taking customers for data transmission Friday.

Verizon cellphone customers should notice an improvement quickly because up until now the company has been renting capacity from other carriers.

GCI and ACS have been preparing for Verizon’s competitive entry for some time. The company claims its 4G capacity will be much faster than what is now being offered, and is touting reliability, with generators located at its towers in case of power failures.

“I pledge to administer the consulate of the Republican of the Philippines at Juneau, Alaska…”

The first Honorary Consul of the Republic of the Philippines to Alaska has been sworn into office.

Long-time Juneau resident Jennifer Gomez Strickler took the oath of office at a ceremony Monday night at the Filipino Community Hall in Juneau.

Consul General of the Philippines to San Francisco, Marciano Paynor, administered the oath.  Strickler will work under the jurisdiction of the San Francisco General Consulate.

Philippine Ambassador to the United States, Jose Cuisia, told members of the Filipino community and current and former Juneau officials that more than 25,000 Filipinos live in Alaska.  He said Strickler will help strengthen ties between the state and the country in addition to her work assisting Filipino nationals in Juneau and other parts of the state.

Check back for a full story on what that means.