A developing situation on Douglas Island: Powerful dreams and powerless feelings
- Jasz Garrett
- Sep 13
- 12 min read
Updated: Sep 13
Cruise port, gondola and casino may be a road to riches, but some city leaders and residents worry about who pays the price
By Jasz Garrett and Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
One of Juneau’s quietest areas may be one of its busiest within a few years, with hundreds of thousands of visitors arriving via cruise ship and bus to new large-scale tourist attractions in the midst of the forests on Douglas Island.
That development is the realization of a dream for some, particularly local Alaska Native entities that are primary stakeholders in the projects and the tribal citizens who will profit as shareholders. A private cruise port, casino-like gambling resort and year-round Eaglecrest Ski Area gondola may be operational by 2028.
But for many residents of the island, it’s an alarming situation they feel largely powerless to resolve, especially with city leaders saying their ability to intervene is limited since two projects are on tribal land.
“Do we want to support endless growth?” said Lisa Daugherty, a Douglas Island resident for 20 years. “Can the economy support endless growth? No, we’re finding it can’t.”
Daugherty expressed her concerns during an Aug. 25 meeting to discuss Juneau’s 20-year comprehensive plan attended by about 40 Douglas residents, who largely agreed with her sentiments while sharing their thoughts on shaping their community’s future. The gathering was among several in recent weeks where the development projects loomed large in the minds of those who see the potential and pitfalls.
In addition to the projects in the early development stages, there is a proposal for a new “bench road” along the coast — allowing a higher volume of traffic than the current North Douglas Highway — and a long-discussed second Juneau-Douglas bridge. Flightseeing helicopters and day-tour boats are also expected to be based at a private cruise port.
Altogether, they could result in a sizable portion of what’s currently 1.6 million annual cruise ship passengers in Juneau spending most or all of their time on Douglas Island.
The proposed private cruise port, for instance, is designed to accommodate two full-size ships on land owned by Goldbelt Inc. along the northwest coast of the island. Juneau currently has a five-ship-a-day limit under a voluntary year-by-year agreement between the city and major cruise lines, so a concern expressed by residents is whether the limit will continue and apply to the dock.
If the limit applies — and city officials say it does — then 40% of major ship traffic will be diverted away from downtown. If not, then Juneau will be accommodating up to seven large ships a day.
Seeking city leaders with the right questions and answers
At an election candidate forum on Sept. 7 at the Douglas Public Library, a question about the Goldbelt dock was the first question asked.
“If elected, how would you approach reviewing this project?” Ed Schoenfeld, a longtime Douglas resident and one of two moderators at the forum, asked the candidates. “What questions would you want answered? What infrastructure improvements, such as widening roads, would you require the developer to provide?
All four candidates talked about the need to assess the environmental and traffic impacts of the areas surrounding the port site — including two candidates competing against each other who favor the proposed bench road to improve access. Another shared concern was that specific details about many aspects of the project are still not available from Goldbelt, with company officials stating more information will be available during the permitting process, now in the initial stages.
“There are a lot of details we just don't know yet,” said Juneau Assembly Member Ella Adkison. “There are a lot of really important impacts to consider, from traffic to environmental impacts to what are the impacts on local businesses if we shift ships from downtown to an area that doesn't have a lot of local businesses.”
“So what we need to be doing is making sure that we have a healthy tourism industry that benefits us, supports our local businesses, but also one that doesn't impact the locals. And right now we’re as an Assembly saying we don't have that yet. We're not ready for the amount of tourists that were here. That's why we have the five-ship limit.”
Goldbelt officials say they’re hoping to open the port, named Goldbelt Aaní, by the 2028 cruise season. A few years after that, planned facilities included a kayak center, skybikes, theater, restaurant, shops, stalls, spa, treehouses and bungalows. An FAQ at the company’s website states the port will generate revenue for the city as well as offer on-site opportunities for local businesses.
“Goldbelt and its shareholders succeed when local businesses and Juneau’s economy thrive,” the FAQ states.
Goldbelt is an Alaska Native Corporation owned by more than 4,300 shareholders, which obtained the land for the proposed port as well as other property in Southeast Alaska via the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, according to the company’s website. The site notes the port will feature a replica 1800s Tlingit village as part of an effort to highlight the heritage of the area’s Indigenous population and the project is intended to benefit those residents.
"Alaska Native Corporations are bound by legal and cultural responsibilities to benefit their owners — all of whom are tribal citizens, many still residing in Juneau for Goldbelt," the FAQ notes. "ANCSA land is not developed to enrich an individual or a singular business interest, but rather to advance the long-term well-being of its Alaska Native shareholders."
Another major project on the northern part of the island is the gambling hall being constructed by the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska on land the tribe owns near Fish Creek, about a mile from Eaglecrest. Tribal documents show plans include a lodge with a restaurant and gift shop, bingo, dining, and entertainment.
A casino at the site has been discussed for roughly a decade, and work is occurring at a time when Tlingit and Haida is making significant investments to expand tourism, education, public safety and other tribal operations. Incumbent Assembly members at the Sept. 7 candidate forum said the tribe is partnering with the city on some of those projects and therefore maintaining a spirit of cooperation is worthwhile.
The Assembly candidates also noted that because the casino is on tribal land, the city will have little say in the development.
“The property is sovereign tribal land and the city should respect the sovereignty of this land,” Deputy Mayor Greg Smith stated. “Tlingit and Haida is a close and valued community partner. So I do respect that there will be communication and partnership between the city and the tribe for police, emergency and other services. Partnership could possibly extend to projects or actions to improve safety and other shared community values, like reducing impacts on neighbors, including traffic impacts, the city will be a willing partner on these efforts, should the tribe desire it.”
The two candidates in the only competitive Assembly race this year — incumbent Wade Bryson and challenger Nano Brooks — both said they favor the proposed bench road for the sake of efficient transport as well as the safety of people along the existing Douglas Highway. They also both want to know more about what facilities the gambling facility will have that could be to the benefit or detriment of the community as a whole.
“If they're planning on bussing tourists up there, letting them spend six hours dumping their money into the machines, and then they're going to take them back to the cruise ships that could have less of an impact than if they're planning on having a full-on hotel with a full restaurant and bar,” Bryson said.
Brooks said the casino can be an opportunity to further a partnership by seeking to link tours at the city-owned ski area with the tribal gambling hall just down the road. Furthermore, “if it's the tribe and the city working a combined effort, and then putting that front out to the state saying that we need a better road to facilitate this, then they're more likely to take action.”
The Eaglecrest gondola is tentatively set to be operating by the 2028 cruise season, with Goldbelt set to be a significant beneficiary due to investing $10 million for installation costs in return for a share of the profits for at least 20 years. The company has stated it expects up to 150,000 people a year to ride the gondola — about half as many as currently ride the Goldbelt Tram downtown.
That bustling activity is heightening long-held concerns of residents who live near the areas now being developed.
Disruption of ‘rhythm of local life’ on North Douglas
On Aug. 25, the City and Borough of Juneau held a public session at Juneau Makerspace for Douglas residents to discuss the “Our Juneau, Our Future” 20-year comprehensive plan.
Sachi Arakawa, lead consultant with Cascadia Partners, said the plan is currently in the first phase of public engagement, called “listen and learn.” She said there will be more opportunities throughout the next two and a half years for people to participate. Earlier this year, similar public sessions were held for residents of the Mendenhall Valley and downtown. Outreach to schools and Alaska Native stakeholders is also taking place.
Attendees speaking up at the meeting were primarily members of the North Douglas Neighborhood Association, according to the group’s president, Ellen Ferguson. She said she came to the meeting to advocate on behalf of more than 100 active members of the neighborhood group, which was incorporated as a nonprofit in 2001.
Members of the group said Douglas Island still has the needs it did more than a decade ago, but with greater urgency now that development is expanding.
“Development is inevitable, but must have conditions that do not harm the residents who live along North Douglas Highway,” said Ferguson, who has lived on Douglas for 40 years. “North Douglas Highway is a conduit for many development projects planned in the future of Juneau.”
In her testimony, Ferguson said she hoped the comment period for the West Douglas development application would be extended beyond Aug. 27.
The application by Goldbelt seeks a permit to construct two cruise ship berths on Douglas Island that can safely accommodate a class of increasingly larger cruise ships docking in Southeast Alaska. The proposed development also includes the onshore visitor attraction development and associated infrastructure necessary to support the cruise ship operations.
Following comments from North Douglas residents, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers subsequently extended the deadline to comment on Goldbelt’s application until at least Sept. 27.
Douglas Mertz, a North Douglas resident for the last 25 years, said the issues of tourism, transportation and housing in the area are intertwined. The city had split them into three separate topics to comment on.
“For years, we’ve been asked to be listened to, and it hasn't happened,” Mertz said. “We didn’t know that the North Douglas highway is over capacity, is dangerous, and that it will get worse with the end of the road developments, with casinos, with increasing tourism. We see dangerous traffic. Those of us who live here, we see it every day.”
He and others present at the meeting said they have asked for a study of a bench road to alleviate traffic on the neighborhood highway. Robyn Marriott Chartrand, who grew up on Douglas and has lived in North Douglas for several years, said she respectfully disagreed with the need for a bypass road.
“We moved out here for the peace and tranquility,” she said. “I don’t want a bench road. I don’t want all that traffic up in the meadows. I kind of like the deer and the bear coming down. If there’s a bench road, it’s going to open it up for so much more development, which I don’t think North Douglas needs, and I don’t think Juneau can handle too much more development personally. I can support better traffic control on North Douglas.”
Fred Hiltner, a 40-year resident of North Douglas, said he is concerned about children on the highway as huge industrial trucks speed by while carrying rock toward the end of the road.
“My son learned to ride his bike on North Douglas Highway,” Hiltner said. “It's something we would not even imagine possible now.”
He said on his way to the meeting, a tour bus sped by, whipping up dust. Hiltner said he was scared “just taking a walk on this road that I’ve been on for so long.”
Kathy Coghill, vice president of the North Douglas Neighborhood Association, said the Tourism Best Management Practices goal is to find a balance “between tourism needs and the rhythm of local life.” On behalf of the neighborhood association, she said the bench road would do just that by decreasing congestion and improving safety by moving traffic out of the North Douglas neighborhood.
She also said the lack of available housing, like other issues, is linked to tourism.
“It seems to me that I haven’t seen anybody talking about the connection between the summer workforce that gets imported to Juneau and the housing crisis, and there’s just a huge connection there,” Coghill said. “And so these different topics are not independent, siloed topics. They’re very interrelated. And I’d just like to ask that the planning group thinks about why we have such a housing crisis and it’s because businesses are buying up housing for their seasonal workers.”
Patricia Collins acknowledged there are large portions of North Douglas that the city could develop for housing and — unlike downtown, Thane and the Mendenhall Valley — the area is not prone to landslides, avalanches and flooding.
CBJ has supported the Juneau Douglas North Crossing with the goal of more housing in mind. The five options for the Juneau Douglas North Crossing, as well as a no-build route, are currently undergoing review through the National Environmental Policy Act. The review is expected to take up to two years.
Jim Powell is part of a research team across five different universities studying the impacts of cruise ships in Juneau and communities across the Arctic. He has been a resident of North Douglas for 35 years and was on the Juneau Assembly for nine years. He said cruise ship impacts need to be managed at a neighborhood scale and the comprehensive plan should build upon local knowledge.
“The North Douglas Neighborhood Association is ready and able to identify, first, the impacts in our neighborhood from tourism, and then, based upon those impacts, develop measures, or you might say, indicators, and ideally come up with a dashboard so we can monitor that right now,” Powell said.
He said worsening cruise tourism issues were ranked by 13 neighborhood associations from 2019 to 2024. In North Douglas, issues of overcrowding, whales, noise and lack of control by the government worsened. Powell said air and wastewater discharge improved because they were regulated.
Mike Stanley has been involved with the North Douglas Neighborhood Association for more than two decades. He said members have repeatedly advocated for a Douglas Island Comprehensive Development Plan, which was mentioned in the city’s 2013 comprehensive plan. Residents also testified that the entire North Douglas section of the 2013 plan was copied and pasted verbatim from the 2008 plan. The last time the city updated its comprehensive plan was in 2013.
“The topic here is future development,” Stanley said. “Well, there’s a lot of future development going on, and it’s not in the future. It’s happening right now, and it’s all happening without any guidance, without any parameters, without any understanding of the impacts overall to our neighborhood. It’s imperative that we have an area planning process for North Douglas.”
Gary Gillette received applause when he said it is not the right time to plan for the next 20 years.
“The whole thing seems to be rushed,” he said about Goldbelt’s cruise dock. “This community didn’t even hear about it. So essentially, the plans were made. They’ve been doing work out there. There’s been a lot of comment about a North Douglas area plan. To me, that's a higher priority if we’re going to even consider the impacts of this development. By the time this comp plan is done, that will be underway — there won't be much that can be done.”
Minta Montalbo, the city’s comprehensive plan project manager, said while the meeting did not aim to provide a project update on anything specific, those worried about development can offer public testimony through the separate processes provided for projects such as Goldbelt’s cruise dock — “the comp plan is not the ‘end-all, be-all.’”
“It doesn’t really matter at the end of the day,” Montalbo said in an interview. “We’ve started this comprehensive plan update project and there’s a tremendous amount of work that has to go into it. It’s not about one particular project or another so we need to continue the work as we’re doing it.”
The next phase of the plan, “imagining possibilities,” will begin this fall and continue through the spring of 2026. It will include community workshops and a prioritization game. A draft plan reveal is scheduled for next summer, extending into the spring of 2027, before the Juneau Assembly considers adopting “Our Juneau, Our Future.”
Montalbo said she was excited by Barb Mecum brightening the outlook for the next 20 years. Montalbo said it was encouraging to have a public comment that focused on thinking outside the box.
“I would hope we can envision in a comprehensive plan for North Douglas things like places for our children to play, for instance, parks and recreation for our own families, for our own children — safe places, ” Mecum said.
“I would like to see us try and envision the things that we do want instead of talking so much about what we don’t want because that’s already happened,” Mecum said. “Let’s have a visioning of what it could be for us who live here.”
• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz@juneauindependent.com or (907) 723-9356. Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
