The Juneau Assembly voted on Monday night to divest from Eaglecrest Ski Area’s gondola project and pay back a $10 million investment from Goldbelt Incorporated.
The vote marks a reversal of the Assembly’s controversial 2022 decision to purchase the gondola for the city-owned ski area. It comes after the Assembly learned the project’s price tag would be nearly four times more than expected due to additional parts, high construction costs and tariffs on imports.
Despite backing out of the estimated $37 million project, Juneau taxpayers still fronted more than $12 million up to this point, which includes the payback to Goldbelt approved Monday night.
Due to compounding monthly interest on the investment, the city actually owes Goldbelt around $12.2 million. But it has roughly $2.7 million still set aside for the project, so it will pay about $9.5 million. The money comes from the city’s general fund.
Assembly member Alicia Hughes-Skandijs said the Assembly should avoid making a mistake this big again. She was one of the few members who were around in 2022 when a slim majority of members voted to purchase the gondola. She voted against it back then.
“Sincerely, I’m sorry that things went this way,” she said during the meeting. “I think it’s really important that we study it after it is over so we know that we’re not going to make a mistake of the same size.”
With its initial purchase, the gondola was hailed as a saving grace for Juneau’s ski area, which has struggled to maintain infrastructure and pay its staff without subsidies from the city. The ski area’s plan to become self-sustainable was heavily reliant on the success of the gondola to promote summer-time operations.
But now that it’s done for, the fate of Eaglecrest’s future hangs in the balance. Last week, the Assembly voted to subsidize the ski area so it can stay open next season on a barebones budget, with a cut to nearly half the staff. What will come after that is still up in the air.
Mayor Beth Weldon voted in favor of divesting from the project despite originally voting for the gondola’s purchase.
“We did not come up with the idea for the gondola — that was totally the general manager and the board at the time,” she said. “And we grasped at the straw, trying to save Eaglecrest. So call us gullible, call us naive, but that’s what we were trying to do, so that was our intent.”
Assembly member Nano Brooks was the only member to vote against the decision. He argued the Assembly should hold off until next year to search for other options.
