Airport lodge plan sparks controversy concerns
The entrance to Girdwood’s airport on Mt. Hood. Residents said they are worried about the impact dump trucks and additional traffic will have on the road.
By Soren Wuerth
A group of four investors, including a former Alaska lieutenant governor, are trying to lease 11 acres alongside Girdwood’s airport to build a fly-in fly-out, 150-room luxury lodge.
Beside a hotel, a 55-year lease would allow private aircraft storage, a sports center, fly out base, and ten residences for employees, among other amenities, located between Girdwood’s airport and Moose Meadows, according to a notice by the Alaska Department of Transportation.
The 85-word description took many by surprise. It appeared on the DOT’s web site on a Friday, May 5, the Cinco de Mayo holiday.
“They’re trying to do what Connie Yoshimura tried to do,” said longtime Girdwood resident Chris Urstadt, referring to the developer who led an attempt to develop a so-called “Holtan Hills” subdivision.
“They’re being sneaky and they’re using money and power to do it,” said Urstadt, who owns a hangar at the airport.
The area of the proposed lease is circled on a DOT airport map with a hand-drawn red outline and arrow.
The proposal has eluded public hearings, competing proposals and community input. It quickly became a topic of discussion both on Girdwood’s Facebook page and during a Girdwood Area Plan meeting on Wednesday.
Investor Jon Faulkner, reached Thursday, said his lease for a lodge has not been awarded yet and expects a “arduous, long and expensive” process after the lease is approved. Jon Faulkner, along with former Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell and their sons, Andrew Faulkner and Timothy Treadwell, make up the project’s principals.
Faulkner declined to give details about the project, calling the community concerns “premature.”
“We’re getting a lot of, I won’t say pressure, but interest, from the Girdwood community to discuss the plan,” Faulkner said. “But at this point it isn’t a project, it’s a process. That’s what Girdwood missed when discussing Holtan Hills.”
Emailed questions sent Tuesday to DOT contact on the project, Vickie Swain, were not answered by Turnagain News’ Friday deadline.
But on Thursday, the News received a letter from the Faulkners and Treadwells sent to “members of the Girdwood community.”
The letter cites family connections to Sewell “Stumpy” Faulkner and invites residents to “engage” in the design of the Lodge. The letter gives few details of the planned lodge, but lists “benefits including maintaining, if not augmenting, the existing outdoor trail systems, improving access to the airport, providing more affordable overnight accommodations, [food and beverage] operations, additional airplane hangar space, and more.”
The letter includes an email, info@glaciervalleylodge.com, and offers replies to questions regarding the project.
“It’s a public and very transparent process that allows anyone in the world to compete. It’s not a sealed bid … there’s no lock. It’s wide open,” Jon Faulkner said in a interview. “I know this sounds dismissive, but the public doesn’t want to waste time on a proposal that’s barely been accepted. It hasn’t risen to the level of a project.
Jon Faulkner said his group will answer questions at Monday’s Girdwood Board of Supervisors meeting scheduled for 7 p.m.
“We are thrilled to introduce ourselves to anybody and everybody,” he said, “and to let people get to know us as Alaskans and ‘Girdweedians’. We don’t have specific plans besides what we got filed with DOT.”
GBOS Co-Chair Mike Edgington said the plan “appeared out of nowhere” and an 11-acre use of public land for a lodge undermines future planning in the area.
“It strikes me as being disproportionate and poor example of process. You’d think before they disposed of an 11-acre lease [the DOT] would have more than this conceptual lease,” Edgington said.
Edgington added that building a lodge in the area would have greater repercussions than an earlier development at the airport, including traffic from side-dump trucks.
He also said the airport has a master plan and a large lodge project would fall outside of that plan.
Jon Faulkner said community input will have a “tremendous influence” on planning, but stopped short of saying the community pressure could kill the project.
“I can’t say it won’t happen. It depends on the amount of opposition,” Faulkner said. “There is not 100 percent veto power by any group or sub-group, but certainly local residents have a lot to say.”
Faulkner, who owns Land’s End Hotel on the Homer spit, served for four months as deputy commissioner at the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development in 2019 under Gov. Mike Dunleavy.
In July of 2019, Faulkner received an Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, or AIDEA, loan for $4.7 million three months after leaving state employment, according to an article in Alaska Public Media. The loan from AIDEA, whose board is appointed by the governor, helped pay for 33 new rooms at Land’s End.
An AIDEA spokesperson said at the time Faulkner did not do anything official for the agency and “no special treatment” on the loan was granted Faulkner, Alaska Public Media reported.
