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Back Loop man applying to keep 200 chickens, 30 farm animals plans to start small with room to grow
- Mark Sabbatini
- 5 hours ago
- 3 min read
Project is for his family, not a commercial or educational farm, applicant says; Planning Commission scheduled to consider conditional use permit Tuesday night
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
Shawn Kantola is seeking permission to keep up to 200 chickens, plus 30 other farm animals such as cows and sheep, on his 2.2 acres of property near Back Loop Road. But he says the seven family members who will be living there aren’t planning anything close to that scale, although he’s hoping a project that starts small will have room to grow someday.
"According to city code, you are allowed up to six hens and/or three farm animals," he said in an interview Monday. "And if you want to go over six hens this is the exact process you have to go through, and it costs somewhere between 500 and $1,000, and I'm now six months into the process."
"My wife and I started chatting about it and going, ‘OK, if we're going to go through this process for a conditional use permit we only ever want to go through it once in our lives.’"
The Juneau Planning Commission is scheduled to consider Kantola’s permit application for his adjacent lots at 10226 and 10228 Silver Street at its meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday.
A report to the commission by Brandon Robinson, a city planner, recommends approval of the permit with several conditions that include noise limits, an electrified fence to protect against bears, water quality safeguards, odors not being detectable beyond the property for more than 48 hours, and keeping slaughtering of animals out of view of adjacent properties and public right-of-way areas.
Kantola, who works as a real estate appraiser, said he and his wife are raising four young children while also "building a house that we want to hold on to for a long time." He said his mother’s also going to live in the downstairs portion of the house when it’s completed and "six hens isn't enough just to do eggs for our family." "If we have laying hens, I would probably start with 10 to 30 laying hens," he said. "And if we one year wanted to do a batch of meat chickens I don't want to do 20 or 30 at a time. I'd rather get 100 chickens, raise them to their nine- to 13-week-age range when you butcher them and put them in the freezer, and you get it all in one fell swoop and you have meat chickens for the next year or two."
The animals would not be raised for commercial sale since the property isn’t zoned for commercial use, Kantola said. The project also wouldn’t be a public farm site such as Swampy Acres, which over the years has been a site for school field trips and other activities.
Kantola said he and his wife are homeschooling their children, so the project may be an educational activity for them — and perhaps more someday.
"We don't know exactly what their interests are going to be," he said. "What happens if somewhere down the road we end up with a couple of pigs and we want to do one litter of piglets?"
He said he’ll also be learning about raising farm animals since he’s done some work with chickens and horses in the past, but never raised them himself.
A city planning map shows his two lots are surrounded by vacant properties, with homes on lots beyond those. Public notices mailed to property owners within 500 feet of the proposed development got three responses. Two support the project with some of the restrictions recommended by the city planner, while one person expressed opposition.
"This proposal is far larger than what most residents would reasonably expect in a residential neighborhood," wrote Maureen Hansen in a three-page letter to the planning commission on July 13. "The potential impacts from noise, odor, waste, runoff, and overall neighborhood character have not been adequately addressed, and the scale of the operation is not compatible with the surrounding residential community."
If the permit is approved it should allow substantially fewer animals, roosters should be prohibited, there should be additional isolation measures from surrounding properties, and "Automatic permit revocation for violations or nuisance conditions," Hansen wrote.
Three additional public comments were submitted to the planning commission between Aug. 2 and 11. One resident expressed support, another resident said he has no objections to the project, and the Southeast Alaska Land Trust stated it opposes the project because it is adjacent to the organization’s Montana Creek Wetlands mitigation site.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
