Juneau could sell Indian Village lots to Tlingit & Haida below market value

The Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska has applied to acquire four small city-owned lots in downtown Juneau's Indian Village, and the city's lands manager wants the Assembly to decide whether to pursue the request, and whether to negotiate directly with the tribe for less than fair market value.

Dan Bleidorn, Juneau's lands and resources manager, asked the Assembly's Lands, Housing and Economic Development Committee to send the tribe's application to the full Assembly in a memo for its Monday meeting. The committee's decision wasn't posted by Tuesday.

The lots, about 8,395 square feet in all, are in what's now called the Aak'w Village District, formerly the Willoughby District. The area was the site of seasonal Auk Nu Tlingit fishing camps until prospectors arrived at the end of the 19th century, according to the city's 2012 land use plan. Many Auk Nu people later moved there to work for wages and settled in a segregated area along the waterfront, the plan says. Urban renewal in the late 1960s forced long-time residents out of their homes without replacement housing, actions the plan says are "clearly remembered" by residents of the remaining Indian Village and by Tlingit & Haida.

Tlingit & Haida told city staff in March 2024 that it wanted the lots. It asked the Assembly to consider transferring the land to it "with the goal of restoring Tlingit and Haida ownership of the Indian Village," according to an April 2024 city memo, which called the tribe the largest landowner on Village Street, though it doesn't own the land directly next to the city's lots. That April, the committee voted to work with the tribe "towards a redevelopment plan and sale." The tribe submitted its application Sept. 4.

The tribe's request came in response to another bid. In December 2023, the committee took up an application from LeMann Bluff LLC to buy three of the lots and combine them with an apartment building's property uphill on Distin Avenue. City staff warned in 2024 that doing so could make it harder to combine properties along Village Street later.

The city took all four lots for unpaid taxes, the first in 1987. Two years later, the Assembly voted to keep that lot for a public purpose. A 1989 city manager's report on the decision said it should be held "until such time as the Juneau Indian Village adopts a redevelopment plan for this area."

The lots have been hit by "repeated illegal dumping and encroachment by neighbors," the memo says. The city paid a contractor $14,251 to clear them in February 2024, and in August, the city's Streets Division cleaned them up again with heavy equipment, working with Tlingit & Haida.

City code generally bars selling city land for less than market value. The exceptions are sales to state or federal agencies and to private nonprofits that use the land solely for a service that supplements or replaces a government service. The code doesn't mention tribal governments. Bleidorn's memo cites that section but doesn't say how it would apply, or whether the tribe asked for a discount. A negotiated sale would also need Planning Commission review and an Assembly ordinance setting its terms.