For Eaglecrest Ski Area’s general manager Dave Scanlan, a recently purchased pulse gondola is all about having a better summer, so Juneau residents can have an even better winter.
“We want to let the summer visitors pay for us to have a world class ski area that’s really affordable for the residents of Juneau and that helps us recruit and retain our staff that we need to run a world class facility,” Scanlan said. “Really, this is all about having the best winter experience and we see this as being the best way for us to do that, without burdening the taxpayers additionally.”
Scanlan recently wrote a letter published on Eaglecrest’s website addressing some of the recent updates concerning the pulse gondola while also providing a brief history and breakdown of financial costs to date. Juneau’s City Assembly allocated $2.5 million for the purchase, design, and transportation of the new gondola, which had to make the trek from Austria before arriving in crates in Eaglecrest’s lower Nordic Parking Lot where it’s currently being kept. According to Scanlan’s letter, the estimated freight cost for transport was $845,163, but in a recent interview with the Empire, Scanlan said they’re currently reconciling with the shipping company for an exact amount.
“I don’t think there’s much of a chance of us coming under that amount,” Scanlan said. “We had some fuel surcharges and some other things that we were settling up on and then our retention fees, they charged us for the days that the containers are away from the port of Seattle, so I expect in the next two weeks we’ll have all of that reconciled and I’m hoping we’re going to come in pretty close to the original bid number which was $847,000 in that ballpark.”
The original budget allocation of the $2.5 million covered the staff cost for travel for the inspection in Austria, as well as the loading, Scanlan said. He added that design and engineering are both on schedule at the moment and he anticipates most of the remaining funds will be used in the coming weeks as the design engineering wraps up and the architecture for installation gets underway.
“The things that we really wanted to have done by Nov. 1 were to get the final alignment surveyed on the ground, being able to identify the location of each tower and then to be able to have that ground surveyed and then be able to go and do geotechnical analysis at each one of those sites,” Scanlan said. “So, we were able to just complete all of that geotech work about a week ago now.”
Scanlan said he’s optimistic that they’ll be able to stay well within the allocated budget, largely because of conversations they’re currently having with Goldbelt Inc. regarding the idea of partnering for any additional capital going forward.
This image shows where pulse gondola will be positioned relative to the ski area boundary. The existing lifts are shown in the color red, the gondola in yellow and the current ski area boundary in blue. (Courtesy Photo / Eaglecrest Ski Area)
“We’ve been discussing with them the idea of them being our partners to provide the additional capital we need to go forward with the installation of the gondola and the summit lodge and some other summer activities,” Scanlan said. “We’re having really good conversations with them right now, so the goal is to not need any additional financial resources from the city to bring the new project online.”
While the project largely remains on schedule, Scanlan said the only thing that so far has posed a surprise was the actual price of shipping costs, which helped push the transport costs closer to the estimated $845,163 figure. Scanlan said shipping costs ultimately changed from the time they were initially put together as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Though there were hopes in the beginning of having the gondola ready for the 2023 winter season, Scanlan said they’re being mindful of supply chain issues, which is the reason for extending their completed timeline.
“It’s obviously affecting everyone, but we knew about that back in May, so aside from that everything has really sort of met our expectations, up to this point, knock on wood,” Scanlan said. “No huge surprises, it’s obviously a big complex project that has many moving parts; obviously, our desire, our best case scenario would have been to have the gondola be ready for winter operations in the winter of 2023-24, however, the whole design team and engineering team, we’re all being very cautious, we don’t want to over promise anything and that’s why we’ve got that finished timeline at the end of the summer of 2024 as what we’re kind of going with and we’re going to do our best to move as quickly as we can.”
According to Scanlan, if Eaglecrest can be successful in raising the bulk of their revenue in the summertime through the use of the pulse gondola, it will ultimately allow for more youth programming, more discounted programming, while also keeping the costs of season passes and ski lift tickets more affordable. Additionally, Scanlan said it would give Eaglecrest the financial means to provide competitive wages while also repairing existing equipment, which in turn all leads to better serving the community of Juneau.
“We see this as a win-win, we’ve got a ton of land mass, we are very confident that we can develop a really fun summer experience that doesn’t completely ruin or degrade our current resident use of the mountain in the summertime,” Scanlan said. “We’re kind of intently designing this so the more commercial summer activities would be over on the right hand side or the west side portion of the mountain and the east side portion of the mountain being more focused on the traditional summer use of hiking and berry picking and things like that. So, we really think we’ve come upon a good successful recipe for us to have a really great prosperous future.”
• Contact reporter Jonson Kuhn at jonson.kuhn@juneauempire.com.
