Economy

A civil lawsuit aimed at preserving a historic neighborhood in the capital city is set for trial next summer. Juneau’s city government, meanwhile, plans to demolish the neighborhood before then.

At a hearing on Wednesday, Superior Court Judge Amanda Browning set the trial date for August 2026. Three longtime tenants of the city-owned Telephone Hill neighborhood filed the lawsuit in October. It seeks to both stop the city’s demolition and reverse the evictions of renters. 

City Attorney Emily Wright said, as it stands legally, nothing is holding the city back from continuing with demolition. 

“There’s nothing stopping forward movement,” she said. “Right now, the timeline that the city manager’s office is working on is a March demo.”

After years of public debate, the Juneau Assembly approved demolishing the homes on the hill this spring to redevelop the area into newer, denser housing. The Assembly says the plan is necessary to address Juneau’s lack of housing. 

But, the tenants’ lawsuit claims that the city improperly evicted people on the hill, illegally phased the redevelopment and the project fails to comply with federal and state historic preservation acts. The city has repeatedly denied these claims.

Following Wednesday’s hearing, the tenants’ attorney, Fred Triem, said he intends to file a motion to prevent the demolition pending the outcome of the August trial. Judge Browning will decide whether to accept or deny it. 

“We want to save the old buildings — that’s the object of the suit,” he said. “We will move forward in the court system with our efforts to protect the buildings while we await the trial presently scheduled for August.”

At the hearing, Judge Browning also ruled on a couple of the eviction cases the city filed against remaining tenants who refused to vacate by the city’s Nov. 1 deadline. While Browning ruled in favor of the city’s right to evict two residences, she gave different eviction deadlines to the tenants because of their personal circumstances. A third eviction case is still pending. 

Juneau’s homeless shelter is once again offering daytime meals and other services after stopping them in August due to safety concerns. 

The Glory Hall’s Executive Director Kaia Quinto said there were multiple instances of violence and threats this summer that put the safety of shelter staff and clients at risk. She said it was getting harder to continue serving the community at all. 

“The reason why we closed day services was because the environment outside on Teal Street was just pretty dangerous and chaotic,” Quinto said. “Which then transferred inside of the facility, made the facility dangerous and chaotic.”

The shelter closed its doors to people who didn’t already have an assigned bed there, with a few exceptions. 

In November, the city again cleared the encampment that had built up outside the shelter, and people haven’t set up there again. The shelter renovated its entrance to have a two-door system, instead of one, allowing staff more control of who’s allowed inside.

Quinto said things calmed down enough to open services safely Tuesday morning. 

“With the encampment moved and the temperature and the weather and our improvements made to the front of the building, we’re feeling pretty confident about opening day services now,” she said.

It’s only been a couple of days, but Quinto said people are using the services. 

And the reopening comes at a good time — Juneau is expected to see single digit and below zero temperatures this week and into next.

The Glory Hall serves meals at 8:30 a.m., noon, and 6 p.m. each day. The city-funded emergency warming shelter near Thane Road opens at 9 p.m. each night until 7 a.m. in the morning, and offers transportation to the Glory Hall. 

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A U.S. Forest Service plan to revamp the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center to accommodate more tourists could be upended by a lawsuit brought by a nearby homeowner. 

Katharine Miller has lived in the Dredge Lake area near the visitor center for about 22 years. 

“It’s my backyard,” she said. “I do spend quite a bit of time there.”

Last July, she sued the Forest Service, claiming the agency violated the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, when it designed its visitor center improvement plan. The plan expands facilities and increases the cap on the number of visitors allowed to come through commercial tour operators. 

Miller’s lawsuit argued that the Forest Service planned the project to accommodate more tourism without considering other options, which it’s legally required to do. In September, a federal court agreed and ruled in her favor.

Now, she’s requesting that the U.S. District Court for Alaska throw out the improvement plan altogether. The Forest Service is asking the court to leave the plan in place, arguing there’s a serious possibility the agency would reach the same decision to deal with existing overcrowding, and that revisions can be made instead. 

But Miller said it matters how the federal government arrives at decisions.

“Federal agencies like the Forest Service manage resources on behalf of the U.S. public,” she said. “They’re public resources, and I think it’s important to hold agencies accountable to include us in that process in a realistic way.”

Miller said she had objected to the agency’s process before the plan was finalized, but felt ignored.

On top of increasing the number of visitors tour companies can bring to the area, the improvement plan includes building a new welcome center and five new cabins, improving the existing visitor center, paving more parking lots and expanding trails. According to the court decision, the improvements are based on an assumption that tourism will grow 2% per year and the agency’s position that it should strive to meet the demand. 

In its ruling, the U.S. District Court for Alaska found the agency’s options for improving the facilities were all narrowly focused on facilitating more tourism. None focused on restricting the number of visitors.

Miller said the Forest Service should have considered a wider range of options beyond supporting tourism growth. 

“Because this isn’t something that’s necessary, it’s something that you want to do,” she said in reference to the Forest Service. “So you need to explain, you know, why that’s better than figuring out a better carrying capacity.”

The annual visitor capacity for the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center is a little more than half a million. The improvement plan allows for nearly double that — bringing the cap to 999,000 — with 87% allowed to be allocated to commercial use.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s brief on behalf of the Forest Service argues the agency can delay raising the capacity and revise parts of the plan that mention the 2% projected tourism growth. 

Despite citing significant congestion, the Forest Service doesn’t have a system for consistently tracking exactly how many people go to the visitor center each year, according to Paul Robbins, a spokesperson for the Tongass National Forest. He said a safe estimate is probably around 700,000 per year. He wrote in an email to KTOO that an estimated million or so people visit the wider Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area annually.

According to a court file the Forest Service submitted, the area’s busiest days over the summer of 2025 ranged from 3,849 to 6,257 visitors.

Robbins declined to comment on the status of the improvement plan due to the ongoing lawsuit. He said agency staff plan to address deferred maintenance at the visitor center in the fall of 2026, work that was supposed to happen this year. It includes things like lighting, HVAC, flooring and painting. He said this maintenance is not part of the improvement project.

It’s unclear when the court will decide whether to throw out the improvement plan as Miller wants, or choose a different way to address the Forest Service’s violation. 

The state of Alaska is considering opening up a new ferry terminal in Southeast Alaska, connecting Alaska’s ferries to the Lower 48 road system without going through Canada.

The idea comes as Alaska continues to struggle with the closure of the ferry terminal at Prince Rupert, British Columbia. Now, the state is conducting a $250,000 study to see if a terminal on Alaska’s side of the border would be a good replacement.

For decades, the Alaska Marine Highway System relied on a terminal at Prince Rupert as its southern road connection. The state has leased the terminal from Canada since 2013, but it’s been closed for most of the past six years. There are numerous complications, like infrastructure challenges and disagreements with Canada over border control responsibilities. The dock needs over $20 million in repairs, and Alaska’s aging fleet isn’t certified for international travel anymore.

Jim Clark spoke about it at a regional development meeting in Ketchikan last year. He’s the former chief of staff for Governor Frank Murkowski, who worked on the ferry system for decades.

“If we can put a man on the moon, we ought to be able to solve the problem between here and 90 miles away at Prince Rupert,” Clark said.

Prince Rupert’s closed terminal has been a hot topic in many southern Southeast meetings. Some, like Robert Venables of the Southeast Conference, say they’re not ready to give up on Prince Rupert.

“It’s going to take everyone to lean into this thing,” Venables said. “It is problematic at the highest levels of bureaucracies to try to get back to Prince Rupert. But we’re going to give it our best, best push, and we’re going to keep pushing until it happens.”

The Prince Rupert connection isn’t completely off the table. But Alaska would need a federal waiver to bypass a requirement that steel materials for repairs be American-made. The state has requested this waiver in recent years without success. Canadian officials have opposed the requirement because the terminal is on Canadian soil.

And so, the state’s Department of Transportation has considered Hyder, Alaska — about 90 miles from Ketchikan — as an alternative.

“Fortunately, we have a lot of data for this site,” said Kirk Miller, an engineer with the state’s Department of Transportation, last year. “We’ve done engineering up and down this whole Causeway, the island, I’ve been working on their harbor and all these projects there for years. So, we have data, but not quite enough.”

This October, a new feasibility study began and is expected to be completed in mid-2026. The study is looking at all the details, like where a dock would go, the water depths, dredging, and environmental concerns.

It’s estimated the new terminal would cost about $30 million. It’s located about the same distance to Seattle as Prince Rupert – about 1,000 road miles. Prince Rupert is much larger than Hyder and has more amenities, but Hyder would be under Alaska’s control.

“I just want to really voice my support for Hyder,” said Bob Horchover, speaking in July as a member of the Alaska Marine Highway Operations Board, which makes recommendations to the state.

“In Hyder, we own the land, and most of the work is already done,” he said. “It’s a very adaptable situation. So, for me, there isn’t even a discussion.”

The state approved a 20-year ferry plan this year, based, in part, on a survey of over 2,500 Alaskans. Many respondents said restoring a road connection in Southeast was a priority.

Local governments agree. The Ketchikan Gateway Borough passed a resolution supporting a Hyder terminal if Prince Rupert doesn’t work out. Nearby Metlakatla feels the same. Mayor Albert Smith said that the lack of a Prince Rupert connection has hurt his town’s economy.

“With fishing, the rail system is real close to Rupert, so we could use the ferry to transport fish, and then it’s connected right to the 48s,” Smith said. “It’s a more efficient way than other ways of shipping.”

At least one Alaska lawmaker is on board: Republican Representative Jeremy Bynum of Ketchikan.

“I’m going to be a fierce fighter here on the legislative side and make sure we can get the funding in place that we need,” he said.

Whether Alaska rebuilds the Prince Rupert connection or builds a new terminal at Hyder, officials say either option would take five to eight years to complete the necessary infrastructure work.

An Alaska Airlines flight headed from Juneau to Sitka on Monday morning was struck by lightning just before landing. 

Passenger Kathy Fitzgerald was on board the 27-minute flight. She said the plane was briefly engulfed in a bright orange and gold flash.

“It was like a giant flashbulb going off throughout the whole plane, coming from outside,” she said. “There was this huge, bright light — there was no loud sound, there was no shimmying or shuddering of the plane.” 

In her time flying through Alaska weather, she said she had never experienced anything like it. 

Fitzgerald was originally traveling from Anchorage, where flight 62 originated, back home to Ketchikan with her family. The leg between Juneau and Sitka was part of the milk run, and was supposed to continue to Ketchikan and Seattle.

According to a spokesperson for the airline, lightning strikes are not unusual.

“Our aircraft are designed to dissipate the electrical energy of the lightning bolt without damaging the aircraft systems,” the spokesperson said. 

The plane landed safely in Sitka, and the spokesperson said maintenance technicians were inspecting the aircraft as a precaution. 

The airline eventually cancelled the flight.

A group of 14 student athletes from Angoon finally returned home from Juneau Friday morning after a cancelled ferry left them stuck in the capital city for four extra days.

The students came to Juneau on Dec. 3 for a basketball tournament. Angoon School principal Emma Demmert was on the trip with the team and said their trip home on state ferry M/V LeConte was cancelled following record-breaking snowfall across Southeast Alaska.

While in Juneau, she said it was challenging to keep the cost of staying extra days from rising too much, but since Angoon and Juneau are so connected, local residents stepped up to keep students fed.

“I’m very thankful to be a part of the community that I’m in, because without them, you know, our kids wouldn’t have food,” she said. “And you know, they’ve really been reaching out and helping us in any way possible.”

Demmert said a Goldbelt Incorporated employee who went to school in Angoon as a child opened the corporation’s classroom up for students to use during the week.

Despite the change in plans, Demmert said the students behaved well, thanks to a schedule that included time for schoolwork, meals and swimming at Dimond Park Aquatic Center. 

“They’ve been going swimming at the swimming pool because it’s cheap entertainment, and it keeps them busy and it gets them tired,” she said.

Demmert said when the ferry was canceled, the group moved from their tournament lodging into the Aspen Suites hotel until they could leave on the next available ferry four days later.

Being stranded in other communities can be financially challenging; the cost of food and additional lodging eats into the school’s activities budget. But Demmert said traveling to other communities is worth the risks of getting stranded because the students work hard to maintain their eligibility and compete.

“They come to practice every day. They keep their grades up. Because of eligibility, they have to have a certain grade point average in order to even be able to travel,” Demmert said. “So given that, it’s like an award for all the hard work they’ve been doing.”

Despite incurring extra costs from this week in Juneau, Demmert said they hope to work out travel for competitions taking place over the rest of the school year.