Empire Archives is a series printed every Saturday featuring a short compilation of headline stories in the Juneau Empire from archived editions in 1984, 1994 and 2004. They include names, AP style and other content of their eras.
This week in 1984, state employees peered out of their Capitol and Alaska Court Building windows to watch a crew begin the job of removing Nimbus, a green sculpture placed in the plaza in 1978. The $40,000 sculpture was ordered replaced by the 13th Alaska Legislature, which passed a resolution saying a way memorial or other piece of art should take its place. Nimbus will be taken to the Department of Transportation’s Switzer Creek area building and stored until a panel decides where it should be relocated. Among the new pieces of art suggested are a memorial to the late Gov. Bill Egan, a war commemoration or a sculpture of a bear by local artist Skip Wallen or a monument to the state’s 25th anniversary of statehood.
Today a William Henry Seward statue stands outside the Dimond Courthouse in downtown Juneau, installed in 2017 after three years of fund-raising by a local planning committee to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Treaty of Cession. In 2020 a petition unsuccessfully sought to remove the statue based on his holding of the treaty authorizing the sale of Alaska from the Russian Empire, which a petitioner said “represents the disenfranchisement of Indigenous peoples…(who) didn’t sell their land to the U.S. and that wrong has never been corrected.”
Original Story: “Nimbus gets the boot,” by the Juneau Empire (no byline). 12/18/1984.
This week in 1994, the National Park Service will endorse a sharp increase in cruise traffic in Glacier Bay National Park, apparently as a result from Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, the incoming chairman of a key committee overseeing the agency. Marvin Jensen, superintendent of the park, said that Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has directed agency staff to rework the vessel management plan for Glacier Bay to list as the “preferred alternative” an increase in the number of ships per day to two per day. In the plan that was about to be published the park service did not list a preferred alternative. Murkowski and others have been seeking for seven years to boost the number of cruise ships to two per day during the 90-day summer season between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Southeast Alaska’s cruise ship industry has experienced phenomenal growth in recent years and now brings nearly 500,000 tourists annually to the Panhandle region.
Today Juneau set a record for cruise ship passengers for the second straight year with 1.68 million visitors during a season extending from April to October.
Original Story: “Cruise traffic to grow,” by Betty Mills. 12/21/1994.
This week in 2004, while passenger demand makes adding a new cruise ship dock seem unavoidable to city officials, a new dock’s location remains in question. The Juneau Waterfront Development Committee on Monday directed the staff to identify ideal locations for a cruise ship dock within the “model” boundaries of the borough. Those include areas not yet incorporated within Juneau. “We have always focused on the downtown,” said Assembly member Johan Dybdahl. “It deserves some look outside downtown. Someone has suggested Shelter Island. Personally, I think it will be too expensive to build the infrastructure.” Juneau’s model borough boundaries, set by a state commission, are expansive. They include the Mansfield Peninsula, Glass Peninsula and Seymour Canal areas of Admiralty Island. They extend south along Stephens Passage to Hobart Bay on the mainland. “The current area of the borough is 3,248 square miles including land, water and ice cap,” said Planning Supervisor Peter Freer. “The area outside the existing boundaries but within the model boundaries is 2,400 square miles of land and water.” The cruise ship industry still favors a new dock downtown at Gold Creek, although two community surveys indicated more than 55 percent of Juneau residents opposed it.
Today a new private cruise ship dock near Gold Creek is well into the bureaucratic process, with the Huna Totem Corp. $150 million proposed project now before the Juneau Assembly after receiving a conditional use permit from the Planning Commission and clearing a legal challenge to that permit. At the same time another proposed private dock well away from downtown was announced earlier this year by Goldbelt Inc. and the Royal Caribbean Group, which wants a twin dock and other tourist facilities on Goldbelt land on the west shore of Douglas Island.
Original Story: “City looks beyond downtown for dock,” by I-Chun-Che. 12/14/2004.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
