Juneau manager seeks Tlingit & Haida partnership to house Coast Guard crews

City Manager Katie Koester is asking the Juneau Assembly to back a partnership with the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska and the Tlingit-Haida Regional Housing Authority to open land at Kowee Creek on Douglas Island for Coast Guard housing. Without enough housing, she wrote, the icebreaker Storis "will not make Juneau its permanent home."

The Storis was commissioned in Juneau in August 2025. The Coast Guard has said it will be permanently homeported in Juneau once the shoreside facilities are ready, which will take several years, and that it uses Seattle as a temporary berth until then.

"The current lack of a definitive plan for housing in Juneau jeopardizes the timeline to homeport the Storis," Koester wrote in a memo to the Assembly's Committee of the Whole, which takes up the request Monday.

The Coast Guard plans to seek proposals for 61 homes that a private developer would build in exchange for a guaranteed five-year lease. It intends to buy the homes but can't promise to under that authority, Koester wrote. She called the approach "unique and untested" and said it makes the homes harder to finance and build.

In Kodiak, she noted, the Coast Guard went a different way, awarding an $81.8 million contract to design and build family housing and a water tank at its base there, plus $61.6 million for a child care center. The Coast Guard also plans to homeport two new Arctic Security Cutters in Kodiak.

"As a community we need to be aggressive in helping the USCG resolve obstacles to development," Koester wrote.

The city, the tribe and the housing authority all own land at Kowee Creek and already work together there through a federal Thriving Communities grant. The housing authority's lot is ready for development, and site work has begun. Roads and utilities brought in for it could serve all three properties and open roughly 50 acres, Koester wrote.

The resolution would let her negotiate an agreement with the two partners and work toward a master plan for the three properties, including a second access road and utilities. It doesn't authorize spending, land transfers or development commitments, and anything that needs Assembly approval would come back separately. The partnership is meant to complement other development, not compete with it, the resolution says.

Monday's meeting is a work session and takes no public testimony. Koester is asking the committee for a motion of support.