Front Street LLC intends to fill .72 acres of tidelands in front of the intersection of Front St. and Union St. (photo by Henry Leasia)
The Haines Borough Planning Commission is concerned that plans to build a boat storage area on the tidelands near downtown Haines have not been vetted properly. At a meeting last week several residents and commissioners said the waterfront development conflicts with the surrounding residential area.
Haines resident Tom Faverty lives across the road from the waterfront near the intersection of Union Street and Front Street.
This spring he was surprised when a large amount of dirt and gravel was deposited across the street with no notice.
“To leave two mounds of dirt like that for five months in front of people’s houses in a beautiful place like that, it’s so disrespectful,” Faverty said.
Earlier this month he wrote a letter to the planning commission about the mounds and the notice he received from the Army Corps of Engineers about a development project on the tidelands.
At a planning commission meeting last week, commissioner Rob Goldberg said he was surprised too.
Dirt and rubble at the intersection of Union St. and Front St. (Photo by Henry Leasia)
“When I first saw Tom Faverty’s letter I was just like, ‘Wait a minute, what’s going on? The fill is on the canal marine property, not over here,'” Goldberg said. “Then it became apparent to me that it wasn’t the Canal Marine property. It was a totally separate project.”
Canal Marine is a local boat and auto repair company. A new building is being constructed on Canal Marine’s waterfront property and the owners say it will be their new multipurpose business space. A recent notice from the Army Corps of Engineers says there are also plans to develop a gravel pad for boat storage on the tidelands to the north of the new building.
Haines developer Roger Schnabel owns Canal Marine’s lot and the three lots where the boat storage area would be developed. Goldberg said the planning commission never heard about the boat storage project.
“The developer did not come into the borough and say I’m planning to make a large parking lot here for boat storage, he came in and just said I’m doing site development,” Goldberg said.
The notice from the Army Corps of Engineers states that Schnabel’s company Front Street LLC applied for a permit to place shot rock and gravel on three quarters of an acre of tidelands just below the intersection of Front Street and Union Street.
Planning Commissioner Lee Heinmiller said he was concerned that the plans did not take cultural impacts into account. According to the application notice, there are no cultural resources in the permit area or within the vicinity of the permit area. Heinmiller said the proposed development area lies within the Deishu village site.
“There’s a lot of historic and cultural resources in that area and to just keep filling them over ignores both the tribe and the people living in the area and the residential area that is gradually being encroached upon to the point of eliminating,” Heinmiller said.
From Schnabel’s perspective, the boat storage is part of a construction project for Canal Marine that had already been permitted. The Army Corps issued a permit to Schnabel in 2015 to grade and fill his tideland properties, but the permit expires this year and needs an extension.
“Because of the fact that it was an extension of the existing permit, we thought that the need for additional permits from the borough would not be necessary. We had the permits already for the property on the Canal Marine and with the definition of an extension of the existing, we thought it would play into that,” Schnabel said in a phone call with KHNS.
In spring of 2019, the Haines Borough issued Schnabel a site development permit to fill and grade for the Canal Marine construction project. Site development permits can be issued without oversight from the planning commission.
Commissioner Golberg said that development of a boat storage facility on Schnabel’s lots would require a conditional use permit, which is reviewed by the planning commission.
“Site development is different from a land use,” Goldberg said. “He has not been granted a conditional use permit for the use he intends to do with the property.”
The planning commission sent a letter to the Army Corps stating that the boat storage project had not been received the correct permit from the borough and conflicted with residential and historical uses in the area.
Schnabel said he was not notified that the planning commission would be discussing his permit application to the Army Corps of Engineers at its meeting last week.
“To act on a permit and use the public as the support for a denial without having the owners there I find pretty aggressive on the part of [the planning commission], and I think it’s also disrespectful to the owner,” Schnabel said.
The Army Corps of Engineers is accepting public comments on the plans to develop boat storage on the tidelands along Front Street through August 28.
