A property owner at 35 Mile Old Haines Highway says he doesn’t need a permit to site a heliport there because the property has been used to land helicopters since 2008 and should be grandfathered in.
Michael Wilson, general manager of Coastal Helicopters, submitted a conditional use permit application for a heliport in September. Wilson and Alaska Heliskiing co-owner Sean Brownell bought the property together in 2008, though Wilson is currently the only owner on paper, Brownell told the Haines Borough Planning Commission last week.
Since receiving the application, the commission has twice postponed making a decision whether to issue the permit. Last Thursday, Brownell said since doing some research, he’s found a permit isn’t needed.
Brownell said the property has been used about 25-30 days for landing helicopters since the site received approval by the FAA in August 2009. That means it was used as a heliport prior to 2011, when the law changed to require conditional use permits for heliports in a general use zone.
According to code, nonconforming uses can be allowed to continue without a permit provided the use – in this case, the landing of helicopters – hasn’t lapsed for two years or more.
“We’ve been landing there since before 2011 and we have not had a two-year lapse in using that place for commercial helicopter operations and we’ve documented all the landings,” Brownell said. “We believe that we have a use-by-right helipad at 35 (Mile).”
Former manager Mark Earnest, for example, grandfathered in heliports at the Constantine Metal Resources site because they had been used consistently since before the law change in 2011.
The planning commission last week decided to hand the question of allowing the heliport over to acting manager Julie Cozzi.
“My question was, ‘How many landings constitutes a heliport?’ If you land a helicopter once, is that a heliport? If you land five times during the year, is that a heliport?” commission chair Rob Goldberg asked. “I don’t know that I feel comfortable making a decision about whether 25 landings in a five-year period constitutes a pre-existing heliport. Maybe it does, but there is precedent for the manager deciding that.”
Brownell said the landings were mostly for refueling. Brownell and Wilson provided documentation of the landings and FAA heliport approval to Cozzi.
Commissioner Robert Venables expressed ire at Brownell and Wilson’s failure to bring this information to the commission’s attention sooner, as doing so would have preserved a lot of goodwill and not wasted the commission’s time.
At prior meetings, several residents, including adjacent property owner Nick Kokotovich, testified against siting the heliport at 35 Mile. Resident Dana Hallett also pointed out residents at 34 Mile would be sandwiched between two heliports and subjected to “noxious noise.”
In an interview after the meeting, Goldberg said he believes Wilson and Brownell must still apply for a conditional use permit to use the heliport for commercial heli-skiing activities.
According to code, every heli-ski permit holder must use either the airport, the 18 Mile heliport, the 33 Mile heliport or “any heliport authorized by the Haines Borough planning commission as a conditional use.”
When asked this week when she expected to have a decision on the matter, Cozzi said she didn’t know.