The municipality of Skagway owns an RV park that they want to subdivide and sell for housing. But first, they need to put in necessities like water, sewer and curbs. The Skagway Borough Assembly voted last week to keep Garden City RV park open for reservations and laundromat use until construction begins.
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Skagway’s Assembly has been discussing what to do with Garden City RV Park for years. After the April 2 meeting, the timeline is a little clearer. The Assembly decided on some planning details, like keeping the majority of the park’s lots at 5,000 square feet, the minimum for residential general zoning. The Assembly hopes that these decisions will get the project moving.
Assembly member Deb Potter gave a timeline for what the Assembly hopes will happen. This year, the municipality finishes the engineering plans and identifies a funding source. One funding possibility is a bond that voters would have to approve. Next year, the Assembly works on finding a solution to the RV and laundromat displacement.
“And then we have construction and land use determination in 2028,” Potter said. “So we still have time to really fine-tune our vision for this property that hopefully will include community land trust lots.”
Borough Manager Emily Deach said she knows people are getting frustrated with the pace of the project. She recommended getting the basic parts of the project started and making final decisions later.
“I would suggest that we just move forward with the engineering based on the zoning and based on the size of sort of a normal lot, and then we can get the engineering done,” she said. “And then the longer discussion is going to be the second issue, which is land use. What do you want to do in each of the zones? Do you want to do sort of high density housing in one?”
The Assembly voted for 20-5,000 square foot lots and two-10,000 square foot lots. Deach noted that it is possible to make some of the lots smaller if needed later.
One of the larger lots is for mixed use. The other large lot was selected by the Skagway Traditional Council. It will be set aside for a memorial site.
Garden City RV formerly housed the Pius X Mission, a resident school for Native children. The Juneau Archdiocese sold the land to the municipality in 2013. The Tribe has argued that the municipality should never have bought the property, and the land should have been turned over to the Tribe. They eventually gave up on the claim and the Assembly offered a small portion of Garden City RV as recognition of the painful history of Pius X.
The Assembly also voted to keep the RV park open until construction begins, which is estimated to be 2028.
While selling the lots should help address Skagway’s housing crisis, two new questions are being raised. How to replace the long-term RV park and what happens when the only laundromat in town closes with the current RV park.
But those are questions for another meeting.
Assembly member Dan Henry has been passionately urging the borough to get utilities installed in Garden City RV and is frustrated by the delay.
“And maybe if we could really press down the accelerator, we can pick up the last two and a half years that we’re already behind,” he said. “But I don’t think that’s possible.”
The next step is for municipality staff to update the conceptual layout. A rough estimate for getting the lots sale ready is $7 million.
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