Holland America’s Charlie Ball pitches partnership for future port management in Skagway

A Disney cruise ship tied up at Skagway’s ore dock. (Emily Files)

At a Skagway Borough Assembly meeting Thursday, representatives from White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad and Holland America discussed future plans for the port. Environmental remediation of the contaminated ore basin and a potential partnership with the municipality to manage the port were the two main topics of focus.

White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad has leased Skagway’s waterfront since 1968. That lease is set to expire in 4 years.

Now the municipality is exploring options for how to manage the port when the lease expires.

On Thursday, the assembly heard from Charlie Ball, Vice President of Land Operations and Customer Service at Holland America Group. Ball pitched a partnership with the Municipality of Skagway for managing the port when White Pass’ lease ends in 2023.

Holland America, a subsidiary cruise line of the Carnival Corporation, purchased White Pass over the summer in partnership with Survey Point Holdings.

Ball addressed concerns that if White Pass ran the port it could create potential problems for competing cruise lines because it is owned by Holland America.

“The fact is that in many ports cruise lines work with one another on different deals,” Ball said. “It’s not that uncommon for us to give money to a competitor in one port if they have the facilities and if we’re fairly treated.”

Ball went on to say that as the operating partner, Survey Point Holdings manages berthing of ships. He said this means that Holland America will not receive preference over other cruise lines.

Ball said that the existing lease gave up too much control from the municipality and envisioned that in the future White Pass would act as a facilitator.

“We really do want to give Skagway’s ports back to Skagway and become a valuable piece of the positive management of that, but we want them to be your ports. Some of these issues of control — we fully intend to let you have the final say of who comes or who doesn’t come,” Ball said.

Assemblyman Dave Brena said that Ball’s presentation was a step towards making progress on the port. However, he said he couldn’t support any sort of partnership without first seeing an operating agreement outlining the roles of the different parties in charge of White Pass.

“How do we know who’s doing what or what kind of agreements are made among these four or so players? I don’t see any way that I would agree to enter into a relationship with a partner with an operating agreement that I had no idea what it said,” Brena said.

Meanwhile, White Pass is working on plans to clean up contamination of the port’s basin around the ore dock.

At the meeting Thursday, White Pass president Bob Berto said that engineers are working on plans to dredge the basin to remove the contamination.

According to Berto, those plans will be completed in 2-3 weeks. Once completed, the municipality will hold a work session with White Pass before the dredge plans are presented to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.