The village of Klukwan has only one capital request to the Alaska Legislature this year: $750,000 for help paying for completion of the Jilkaat Kwaan Heritage Center.
Heritage center director Lani Hotch said the requested appropriation is half the $1.5 million the project must raise to reach a “tipping point” of 75 percent of total funding. Reaching it would make the $7.4 million project eligible for nearly $2 million in completion funds from the Rasmuson Foundation, Murdoch Charitable Trust and the federal department of Housing and Urban Development.
“We hope to have the middle gap (of funding) bridged by fall,” Hotch said in an interview.
Factors she’s hoping work in favor of the legislative appropriation include that the project received no funds last year, that it’s the village’s only request, that the center will benefit local and regional economies, and that it is already half complete.
“They may not be willing to build anything new but they may be willing to finish something they’ve started,” Hotch said.
The cultural center is framed in, awaiting interior work and exhibits.
If the funding doesn’t come, “we’ll keep looking for funds, but we’re really counting on them to come through for us. We’ve already pared back the interior of the building as much as we can to make it as cost-effective as possible,” Hotch said.
Cuts include removal of a plan to install a pellet boiler in the cultural center. The project will wait and see how the bugs are worked out of pellet boilers recently installed in town buildings before making such an investment, she said. Until then, the boiler in the center’s adjacent Hospitality House will be able to provide heat to the building, Hotch said.
“That was an easy cut to make,” she said.
The project is hoping to raise half of the $1.5 million of the “middle gap” from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (rural development loan and grant of $350,000), Furdna Foundation ($150,000 to promote cultural arts), Sealaska Corp. ($250,000), National Park Service ($40,000 in tribal heritage historic preservation funds), Institute of Museum and Library Services ($50,000), and National Endowment for the Arts ($50,000).
Hotch said the federal loan would be repaid in part by village tours. The village is partnering with Chilkat Guides this year to offer tours.
Hotch recently was awarded a $5,000 grant she’ll use to design a Chilkat Weaving exhibit, one of four major exhibits planned for the center. She was eligible for the grant for having been a previous recipient of a First People’s Fund Community Spirit Award.
Other center exhibits will include the Whale House artifacts, Chilkat cultural landscape map, and Year in the Life of a Chilkat (highlighting the subsistence lifestyle).
The Haines Borough is seeking $14.67 million in legislative grants for about 10 projects.