Skagway’s assembly approved a plan to convert one of its RV parks, formerly the site of a mission boarding school, into 32 housing lots. 

 

The Skagway Borough Assembly recently approved a conceptual plan for the two blocks that make up Garden City RV Park. Block 95 would be divided into 12 housing lots and Block 102 would be divided into 20 smaller lots for mobile homes.

The approval comes just a few weeks after St. Pius X Mission Residential Boarding School for Native Children was designated a Federal Indian Boarding School. Pius X operated from 1932-1960 on the site of the RV park. The Catholic Church sold the land to the municipality in 2013, despite concerns from Skagway Traditional Council, the local tribe.

Resident and business owner Charity Pomeroy shared her feelings about the tension between housing and respecting the tribe during Citizens Present.

“We are desperate for housing,” she says. “We all want to see housing built. God knows I do. We are short employees at my company because we are short housing. But I don’t want to see the Pius X site bulldozed through. I want to ensure – I want to know in 10 years looking back at this, that we did everything as a municipality to help those who were affected by the horrific abuse that happened on that site, to help them find closure. And we cannot do that without involving the Traditional Council every step of the way, whatever that means. And I don’t feel like we have done that fully.” 

An earlier resolution reserves two lots to use as a memorial to commemorate Pius X. Instructions are included in the approval of this conceptual plan to reach out to Skagway Traditional Council to determine which two of the 5,000 square-foot lots in Block 95 they would prefer. 

Assembly member Orion Hanson explained the purpose of the conceptual plan.

“And the reason for this is to get utilities, streets and alleys put in,” Hanson says. “And curbs and gutters.”

The cost for that infrastructure has been estimated at over $6 million.

Hanson, a builder, begrudgingly endorsed the plan.

“And this makes me kind of nauseous that I’m up here as a proponent of this, because I do build things stick frame every day,” he says. “And it’s a lot of work, and it’s a lot of time, it’s a lot of money – custom houses. But a trailer court is by far the fastest way we can address the housing need. I think it would probably be the least expensive for renters or owners, and it would be the most expeditious way we could do it.”

With the plan approved, municipal staff can begin work on a budget and final design proposal. The assembly has yet to decide if moving forward, they will form a community land trust, work with a private developer or use some other means of disposing of the land for homes.

Resident Wendy Anderson testified at the last Public Works meeting. She wants to divert traffic away from the school, as it currently is with the RV park land undeveloped.

“So when we’re looking at developing that Garden City property and putting utilities and such in, if we could design that in some sort of way that those streets become, say, U-turns or dead ends of some sort,” she says. “So that we don’t have all that traffic going through from State Street to Main over there. It really is going to protect the integrity of our residential area and provide a nice buffer for our April, May, August, September times when we’ve got school kids and traffic going on.”

The conceptual plan leaves flexibility to use the smaller lots in Block 102 as larger lots if desired at a later date.