Juneau planners to decide permit for Guardian Flight hangar already standing

Juneau's Planning Commission is scheduled to decide Tuesday, Nov. 10, whether to approve a 21,600-square-foot hangar for Guardian Flight's medical jets at Juneau International Airport. The hangar is already standing.

The airport's architect, Ke Mell, reported in August that the building was enclosed. The city has not issued a building permit for anything above the foundation. That permit is on hold until the commission acts, according to city planner Brandon Robinson's staff report.

A June 5 note in the city's permit records says the foundation permit "was mistakenly issued" because of an error involving Tyler Technologies, the company behind the city's online permit system, and never went through zoning review. The same note says construction on the hangar "has begun without a permit being issued." The applicants told the city in August they faced a November deadline to occupy the building.

The hangar would hold Guardian's medical jets, along with an ambulance bay, offices, a training space and a second-floor mezzanine of crew bunks where staff can rest during long shifts, according to the application. It would be the base of operations for Northern Southeast Alaska for GMR, known locally as Guardian Flight, which transports patients "from lower to higher levels of medical care," the application says. Its ambulance crews shuttle patients between the airport and Bartlett Regional Hospital.

Guardian has been using an existing hangar on the same street, Livingston Way, between Airlift Northwest's hangar and the National Guard's, Mell's report said in August. Alaska NNN LLC, which leases the new lot from the city, is building the hangar for Guardian.

The city says the hangar needs a conditional-use permit, which lets the commission weigh a project case by case and attach conditions or deny it.

City staff recommend approval, saying the hangar would help medical access to and from Juneau's hospital, "meeting a key regional need." Their conditions would require full-cutoff exterior lights that don't glare onto public roads or neighboring property, an oil-spill containment device on site, and spill cleanup supplies stored within a 15-minute round trip.

The city had received no public comments when the staff report, dated Nov. 3, was drafted.