Skagway Assembly looks for land with development potential to alleviate housing shortage

The Skagway Borough Assembly is interested in opening up land for development in and around the municipality. That is one item up for discussion at the assembly’s meeting tonight. 

Recently the assembly’s civic affairs committee has been making inquiries to different state agencies that own land around Skagway. They are aiming to open up more opportunities for development that could alleviate the municipality’s housing shortage.

Last month, they contacted the Alaska Mental Health Land Trust about parcels along the Dyea Road and Klondike Highway. Assemblyman David Brena, who chairs the civic affairs committee,  said they are hoping the land trust will make those parcels available for the public to purchase.

“They make land available every year that is open to the public to bid on,” Brena said. “The mental health land from my point of view is just — it would be nice to get it released, and it would be nice if somebody bought it and did something, but these are smaller, harder to develop sites.”

The Skagway Assembly is also looking at some state land behind Seven Pastures along the Skagway River.

Brena said that could be a desirable location for an RV park because it is close to the sewer line. His thinking is that relocating the Garden City RV Park from its current location along Main St to the site behind Seven Pastures would open up space in the center of town for other uses.

“Maybe mixed-use development or maybe housing. It would support any number of things because it’s right in the middle of town more or less,” Brena said.

The third piece of land that the assembly has been looking at is in the Denver Valley. The land is owned by the U.S. Forest Service and lies roughly 4 miles north of Skagway along the river.

Thanks to the Townsite Act, the Skagway Borough may be able to purchase the land from the Forest Service. The act allows local governments to purchase up to 640 acres of Forest Service lands that are adjacent to the municipality.

Brena thinks this amount of land could be a huge benefit to the city of Skagway. There are several reasons why he thinks the site has potential for development.

“Road access to that area is level and it’s bedrock, and so building a road out there would be relatively easy to do. And then of course the way I visualize it, the water would be locally sourced there some way or another,” Brena said.

At the moment the Denver Valley is primarily used for tourism and recreation. A popular trail to access the Denver Glacier runs through it.

Also on the agenda for the meeting is a discussion of a class action lawsuit that aims to recover payments that should have been made to local governments through the Payment in Lieu of Tax or PILT Act.

PILT payments are Federal payments to local governments that help offset losses in property taxes due to non-taxable Federal lands within their boundaries. The Municipality of Skagway has the opportunity to participate in the lawsuit to receive reimbursement for underpayment of PILT funds.