The American Bald Eagle Foundation has big plans, and the Haines Borough’s community and economic development director is trying to help the nonprofit realize them.

Development director Bill Mandeville said he has been working with foundation founder Dave Olerud on a development project that would expand the eagle foundation’s facility to include more display space, an IMAX theater, an aviary for live exhibits, a school of ornithology and a business incubator for ecotourism start-ups.

Mandeville is working on a federal Economic Development Administration grant to fund draft conceptual designs of the project.

“My job here is to try to create jobs. That’s what I do. And the way that I do that is by helping businesses and nonprofits expand and grow,” Mandeville said.

“The Bald Eagle Foundation is one of the largest nonprofits that we have, and they are very successful. They’ve got some good plans for expansion. So my job – what the taxpayers are paying me to do – is to work with groups like them as well as other for-profit businesses as well as some other groups to try to come up with business opportunities that will generate jobs.”

As the project is still in its preliminary phases, it’s unclear where it would go.

Mandeville made some rough designs showing that the theater, aviary, and additional office/lab space and the accompanying parking lot would be too big for the lot next to the public safety building. So, he suggested building an aviary by the Mosquito Lake School and using the school building as lab space for ornithology students.

“The advantage that this presents is that you could create a very nice tourism product of people going to the Bald Eagle Foundation and then stopping at the bald eagle sanctuary (near 19 Mile Haines Highway) and seeing the bald eagles, and then ending their tour by coming to the Mosquito Lake School facility and seeing the live bird displays,” Mandeville said.

Olerud said ideally he would like to the keep the foundation’s facilities contiguous, which would involve closing a portion of Second Avenue between the foundation and the police station.

Inspiration for the IMAX theater, Olerud said, came from a trip to St. Paul, Minn., where he met chimpanzee researcher Dr. Jane Goodall. Olerud and his wife Char also watched Goodall’s IMAX film there, “Jane Goodall’s Wild Chimpanzees.”

IMAX is an acronym for Image MAXimum. It’s a film format that records and displays images of far greater size and resolution than regular film systems.

Olerud called his IMAX experience “unbelievable.” “I got airsick. My wife and I sat there and those damn chimpanzees were jumping all over us,” he said.

In his research, Olerud found there are smaller versions of IMAX theaters than the humongous globes people might think of. That’s the kind he’s thinking of, Olerud said.

As far as the school for the study of birds goes, Olerud said the Chilkat Valley and Alaska in general are an untapped resource for ornithology students.

“We have the greatest resources dealing with birds of any state in the union, and yet we have a couple of volunteers that will repair injured birds,” Olerud said.

Olerud said he has been talking with the University of Alaska Southeast and Alaska Pacific University about establishing an accredited program and having students do work in Haines.

Development director Mandeville’s work with the eagle foundation is part of his three-pronged “tourism revitalization initiative.”

The initiative’s first prong is the cruise ship waiver program currently under committee review that would offer docking fee waivers to ships as an incentive for them to visit Haines. The second prong (which the eagle foundation project is part of) is developing new tourism products. The third prong involves maintaining and improving borough tourism products, like facilities, gardens and landscape features, so they remain attractive throughout the season.

The cruise ship waiver program would act as the borough’s “foot in the door,” so to speak, toward getting visitors in Haines, Mandeville said. “The other thing is you’ve got to have things on your shelf to sell. This definitely would become one of those,” he said of the eagle foundation project.

“Part of what we are trying to do by having a good marketing plan, by having some key projects like this, is to start developing some of that propensity to invest, that hype that would get people excited and say, ‘It’s worthwhile to make those kinds of investments here in Haines,’ because it really is,” he added.

The Economic Development Administration grant Mandeville is putting together for the project would provide up to $200,000 for planning and design of the project, and would also offer a more solid cost estimate (Mandeville cited a rough figure of about $5 million).

“Once you have the estimate and once you have the design, then you can go to other funders and take a look at other funding sources,” he said.

If the borough helps the foundation apply for loans or find other sources of funding, that doesn’t put it on the hook financially, Mandeville said. “The local government does not assume responsibility for payment of the loans,” he said.

Mandeville said he chose the eagle foundation instead of another nonprofit because the foundation fits several of the qualities he looks for when ferreting out businesses and nonprofits to help.

“It’s based on the viability of a person’s business plan,” Mandeville said. “If someone can come to me with their business plan and they can show that they’ve got 30 percent equity, that they have five years of experience, that they are knowledgeable about the business, that they know how to do inventory control, all those kinds of things, then yeah. It’s just a matter of making the connections and doing some coaching and they are off and running.”

Mandeville said he isn’t ready yet to open his door to all the businesses and nonprofits that need help in Haines; he still needs to make some better connections with banks and nonprofit lending institutions, he said.

“There are a couple things that I still need to do before I put out my shingle and say, ‘Come and see me,’” he said.

Olerud said he is glad the borough is reaching out to his nonprofit organization and asking how it can help. “I would like to see the Mayor, the manager and Bill (Mandeville) and the whole borough assembly come forward and say, ‘Dave, how can we go forward and make this happen to the best for our community?’”

Olerud knows his plans are big, but he is hopeful they will come together. “If you don’t plant the seed, woe be unto you if you think you’re going to have a harvest. And right now we got to plant that seed. We have such fertile ground to work with.”