Three days after the final ruling in a lawsuit over how the city spends passenger fees, the Juneau Assembly approved a downtown waterfront improvement package Monday that will be paid for in large part with those fees.
The city hopes building a new bus staging area and expanding walkways will help with pedestrian and vehicle congestion around the cruise ship docks.
Kirby Day from the Tourism Best Management Practices working group spoke Monday night in support of the project and urged the city to be proactive in thinking about the increasing number of visitors arriving each year.
“The growth is coming, and we want to do it in in a manner that is prudent and in a manner that not only handles pedestrian traffic and vehicular traffic, but just makes the downtown core a lot more palatable for all of us who live here, but also for visitors,” Day said.
Juneau is expected to see 1.3 million cruise ship passengers this year.
The Assembly approved an agreement to buy the Archipelago lot next to the downtown library. The city will buy a portion of the land from Morris Communications and also sell them land.
Morris Communications will hold off on its development while the city constructs decks over the tidelands and will allow a contractor to use their lot for equipment staging. A report from the city manager estimates the entire project will cost $23.5 million and take at least two years to construct.
Assembly member Loren Jones has vocally objected to the project, saying he isn’t confident that the agreement holds Morris fully responsible for developing their lot.
“You approve this project tonight, you’re going to have a fence around that property for two construction years,” Jones said. “In two years we could be having this conversation and find out that was a big mistake.”
Both the $900,000 purchase and sale agreement and the $11 million phase one funding package passed with a 7-2 vote, with Jones and Assembly member Rob Edwardson voting against them.
Funding will come from a mixture of marine passenger fees, port development fees, revenue from the state’s cruise passenger head tax and other city sources.
The Assembly also awarded a related contract to Island Contractors for $784,000.
City officials say the projects are in line with federal Judge H. Russel Holland’s ruling that fees must be spent in service to the ships and with legal precedent for spending passenger fees for tourism infrastructure.
The Assembly could still decide to appeal the judge’s decision.
Last week, the cruise industry sent a letter to City Manager Rorie Watt warning him that using marine passenger fees to pay for the Archipelago project would be inappropriate.
But on Monday, the industry sent another letter backing off. In it, Cruise Lines International Association Alaska President John Binkley writes that the project would have substantial benefit to seasonal tourism business and that the industry group would consider an agreement not to object if it can negotiate a settlement with the city to have more say over the future spending of fees.
Watt said Monday he was happy to see the change of tune.
“We appreciate their effort to support the project, and I think the proponents are happy to move forward,” he said.
The Assembly also approved $170,000 in passenger fee revenue for new security checkpoint facilities for the cruise ships.
