After a 40-minute discussion at the planning commission meeting Thursday, Big Salmon Ventures owner Scott Sundberg withdrew his application for a heliport near 26 Mile on the Haines Highway, though only temporarily.
“At this point I will withdraw because… I do hear that it’s not going to pass, so that’s the main reason,” Sundberg told commissioners. “I will go back to work and get my facts lined up, and hopefully we can revisit this in the next year.”
On Thursday, the planning commission began the hearing with a motion: to reject the conditional use permit because it failed to meet four of eight criteria required in code. Commissioners delayed their decision the month before to allow borough attorney Brooks Chandler to weigh in on the issue.
The planning commission has twice rejected Sundberg’s application, a decision upheld by the Alaska Superior Court in 2015 primarily for the “undue noise” a helicopter would impose on neighbors.
The commission asked Chandler what factual or legal issues it must evaluate for the new permit. Chandler wrote that the commission should determine whether the undue noise that drove the permit denial in 2015 has materially changed.
“For example, perhaps the general ambient background noise has increased significantly due to growth or other ‘noisy’ uses that were not present in 2015,” he said.
Sundberg’s new permit cites development in the area as reason to reconsider the heliport, including an airstrip and marijuana cultivation business.
Commissioner chair Sylvia Heinz, following the lead laid out by Chandler, asked each commissioner if they felt there was a material change in undue noise in the area since the last evaluation.
Commissioners were split on the issue, with Diana Lapham, Zack Ferrin and Don Turner believing that the neighborhood’s adoption of new industry constituted as significant change. Rob Goldberg, Jess Kayser Forester, Lee Heinmiller and Heinz said that circumstances have not materially changed since 2015.
Lapham said that, in a text conversation she had with airstrip owner George Campbell, he said he plans to add another 1,000 feet to the runway and open it up for commercial use. There is no regulation for airstrips in a general use zone in Haines Borough code.
“His future plans are to have fly-ins…bring 40 to 60 airplanes in,” Lapham said. “With this new information that I have received from Mr. Campbell, I believe that a helipad will be the least of their noise problems,” Lapham said.
Commissioners Zack Ferrin and Don Turner agreed that the noise level near 26 Mile has increased in the past five years.
Turner disagreed with the borough’s choice to notify property owners of the application outside of 500 feet from the proposed heliport, and for considering their testimony.
“Our code says that we’re supposed to go 500 feet from the plot, and we’re extending ourselves way over that,” Turner said. He added that the new application shifts the takeoff and landing location 250 feet from the location where noise study was taken in 2014 to measure impact. “The only way to prove the noise has changed is to fly some helicopters out there,” he said.
“I do not believe that there is undue stress from a helicopter that far away,” Turner said. “And people that are closer than that are in favor of it.”
In April, Sundberg applied for a conditional use permit but pulled it the day of the meeting. At the time, six of seven adjacent property owners to the proposed heliport wrote letters of support.
In September, 11 residents within a mile of the site testified opposition to the planning commission.
Code dictates that the borough must notice all property owners “within an area of 500 feet from the location of a proposed variance, conditional use or rezoning,” but planning technician Savannah Maidy said that code does not limit how far out a borough can notice.
“The reason we did that is because this is such a contentious issue and has been fought over for quite a while,” she said. “We didn’t want it to come back to us and say that there wasn’t proper notification.”
Other commissioners said they couldn’t prove a noise increase in the neighborhood—yet.
“Let’s say that Mr.Campbell’s airstrip was landing 40 airplanes a day and then the applicant came to us with an application,” commissioner Jess Kayser Forester said. “I’d say ‘Oh yeah, this neighborhood has changed dramatically. The noise is way different.’”
“We’ll deal with it when it happens,” commission Lee Heinmiller said.
Heinz said she has seen a “huge increase in industrial activity,” over the years, but that doesn’t mean ambient noise has gone up with it. “If I get new evidence that things have changed, I very well could change my opinion,” she said at the meeting. She later told the CVN that she didn’t see evidence in the record that the ambient noise level to the adjacent neighborhood has significantly changed.
If the commission had granted Sundberg’s permit without “technical evidence” of material change since 2015, Chandler wrote that it could be successfully challenged on appeal.
Lapham proposed revisiting the eight points of criteria required for conditional use permitting. “They do not take into account the general use zone,” she said. “They work well for the townsite area, but not for general use.”
Maidy said the planning commission recognizes that the approval criteria are “incredibly subjective and hard to define” and is looking at writing special approval criteria specifically for heliports.
Sundberg left Thursday’s meeting with the promise that he will go back to work. “I know what I need to work on,” he said. “Scheduling more flights to Campbell’s airstrips is one of them.”
He added that, after 10 years fighting for a heliport at 26 Mile, “it’s very refreshing to hear that there is a difference between the townsite and the general use and that the criteria cannot fit both. It’s stifling this community, and I’m a prime example of it.”
Nearby land owner Jessica Plachta told the CVN she was “disturbed” by the repeated allowances to the applicant to “game the system.”
“This is the fourth time he has withdrawn his application when it came apparent that he would be denied his desired permit,” Plachta said. “This leaves him with the option of shuffling his cards, restacking the deck, and returning in a year with the hopes of a different result.”
Sundberg withdrew his application in 2015, April 2019, and on Thursday. In 2011, records show that his application was removed from the agenda, though it’s unclear why.