Five businesses in Skagway that were leasing space from the park service are in limbo. When the pandemic shut down the local economy,  they found themselves occupying buildings on a Broadway that did not receive the usual flow of tourists. Their leases have to be bid on every year, and one business owner who had not yet signed the required paperwork, was able to get out of his contract. The others entered in negotiations with the park service, and came out with the understanding that the lease would be suspended.

Greg Clem, owner of Alaska Fairy Tales, explains his situation:

“We got the retail store put in in March of 2020, and of course that’s when COVID hit. So our bid was based on the income from 2019. In 2020 we lost all of our income, in 2021 we had very minimal income. In 2020 the National Park -service put out the stay at home -order-

So of course we honored that, we closed the store. At the end of 2021 according to their records we owe them over $60.000 in rent for the time that we were closed. Of course with no income we couldn’t pay it, and that is the same issue that all the leasees are having with the National Park properties. The reason we continued with them is the superintendent came and said there will be a forbearance on all leases owed. And we will not be required to repay that forbearance. It will sit out there in Lala Land, and the government will not give us free rent, the rent will be owed but we won’t pay it. And we got a letter saying that the rent was in forbearance, and there is no due date for that forbearance. We got a new superintendent, we got new people up above in the government, and they have decided now that they are going to collect that back rent. The decisions are not coming from the superintendent as I understand it, it is coming from up above.

The fact that we were told that we would not owe if we continued our leases is why we continued our leases. Otherwise all of us would have canceled our leases, walked away from it. None of us would have continued on. Well now here we are two years after the fat, and they are trying to collect.”

In June the leasees received letters implying that the park service intends to collect back rents. They tried to start a discussion but have not been able to reach decision makers at the agency,

“The last letter was not answered at all, no response whatsoever.”

And they are fearing the implications of not being able to negotiate.

“It’s going to bankrupt every single leasee that has done business with the National Park. Everyone of us are local vendors, we are all from Skagway. I’ve done business with the National Park for 20 years, but it’s going to wind up just bankrupting everybody. And they don’t seem to care about it. They want their money, they are not willing to work with us, they are not willing to deal with us.”

The situation feels unfair to him.

“And the fact they told us to close our doors, for over a year, and then they are still going to want to collect the rent from us, makes no sense.”

Carl Klupar, owner of the art gallery and gift store Lynch and Kennedy, feels the park service changed their story

“There were communications between us and them indicating that we’d pay what we could during the COVIDS period, and then we would resume after it’s over, and now it’s changed a bit.”

And there is difficulty in tracking down how the agreement came to be:

“There was a combination of correspondence and informal conversations. And that’s part of the problem, I don’t think everything is all together in one spot.”

Co-owner Rosemary Libert points out that the message has not been consistent across different levels of the agency.

“We’ve got the communication with the local park service, and then the regional office, and then there is an office in Washington DC, they all seem to have some kind of opinion about this, and that’s part of the difficulty is that who has the deciding understanding of what actually occurred and what the understanding with everybody was.”

And she pleads for more open communication. 

“I think the conversation really needs to be brought back to the table where it’s reasonable. Paying full back rent for two years of lost industry, it creates such hardship for everybody> The five of us represent a good percentage of the local business owners in Skagway.”

Part of the issue may have to do with the original language used by the park. 

“Forbearance is about a mortgage or a loan, not a lease payment. On a lease you use different language to explain what their intent was. So I think part of the problem was one hand didn’t know what the other hand was doing.”

“It was clearly understood by all the lease holders that there would be no payment that was to be required and that any kind of payment was voluntary.”

For now, five locally owned businesses on Broadway have their future on hold. Winter is the time to order merchandise and make plans and hire staff, the current uncertainty doesn’t allow the owners to do any of it. Still they hope for an amicable resolution.

“We want to do our best to maintain a good relationship with the park service. And we just need to get this issue resolved.”

The National Park Service could not be reached by airtime.