Juneau harbor board weighs a bigger North Douglas ramp and a higher charter fee

Juneau's Docks and Harbors Board will decide Thursday whether to hire engineers to start designing a bigger North Douglas launch ramp, one that could be built to handle charter boats.

The same night, the board holds a public hearing on raising the fee charter operators pay for each passenger, from $2.05 to about $7.50 over four years.

Both are tied to Statter Harbor in Auke Bay. Port Director Carl Uchytil wrote in an Oct. 13 memo that a commercial loading zone at North Douglas could ease charter crowding at Statter Harbor and help pay for the ramp, and that "a rigorous engineering review along with community input may warrant commercial charter use at this facility."

In September, Uchytil told the board that repairs to failed connections on one of Statter Harbor's concrete floats could cost $250,000 to $500,000 this winter, about a year's worth of what the passenger fee brings in, according to the board's minutes. The city's visitor industry director asked the board to coordinate any increase with a task force studying whale-watching licensing, so the Assembly could weigh the combined cost to operators. That motion failed 1-8. The board then voted 7-2 to propose the increase, which would go to the Assembly.

The ramp contract, $365,000 with PND Engineers, is on the board's consent agenda, along with a $750,000 transfer to the project from the department's docks fund. The ramp's $1.225 million so far has come from the harbors fund. The transfer also needs an Assembly ordinance, which a draft lists for introduction Nov. 16.

PND would start by asking the public who the ramp should serve, including "whether the project should accommodate passenger-for-hire tour bus and vessel operations," then draw at least three designs. The contract also pays for a $50,000 study of whether waste rock from the Kensington Mine could be barged in as fill, plus ground testing, wave modeling and surveying.

In a 2023 city survey, some users supported expanding the ramp, while others called it inconvenient and dangerous. "That launch is a mess," one wrote.

The department's capital plan lists the expansion at $35 million over fiscal 2028 to 2030.