Johanna Dybdahl, cultural supervisor at Icy Strait Point, took the Capital City Weekly on a tour of Icy Strait Point’s completed dock and under-construction Adventure Center and Duck Point Smokehouse during a March visit to Hoonah.
The issue of where the dock would be built was a contentious one two years ago. Councilman Bob Starbard, who says he campaigned and got elected to the council largely because of his support for the construction of the facility at ISP, said he thinks the town’s residents have moved on and are trying to heal from the discord. Hoonah residents will be allowed to use the dock, Dybdahl said, and tour operators not affiliated with Huna Totem will now pick up clients at the same location as ISP operators.
The dock, Dybdahl said, will allow more than 1,000 passengers to disembark at the same time, a vast increase from the number that could disembark at a time when cruise ships had to tender passengers ashore. Huna Totem Corporation hopes the dock will also increase the numbers of cruise ships visiting Hoonah as early as 2017, Dybdahl said. (She added that it’s important to balance that with maintaining Hoonah’s small-town atmosphere.)
The first cruise ship will visit Hoonah this year on May 11.
The under-construction inside of the 7,000-foot Adventure Center, the first building tourists disembarking from their cruise ship will enter at Icy Strait Point.
