Regal Realty
A longtime real estate agent in Haines has opened her own brokerage – and a new physical office – near downtown.
While Mandy Reigle technically launched Regal Realty in January, a physical location was under wraps for most of the summer. The windows of her Second Avenue building were covered in newspaper, sporting an advertisement for a new scissor museum to open in downtown.
But by the first week of September, a caribou head was mounted on the door, and plants and strings of festive lights welcomed dozens who stopped by for a First Friday event formally opening the space to the public.
While opening a brokerage requires more training and experience than operating as a realtor, Reigle said people could expect, essentially, the same things she’s been doing since she started practicing real estate in Southeast Alaska in 2017.
“I’m just basically flying a different flag,” she said. “I help people as a buyer’s agent. I help them by writing their offers and finding a property for them that suits their needs. In commercial, I do that too. I’m also a listing agent, so I’m helping sell their property.”
It’s something of a vote of confidence in the local real estate market that Reigle has opened the new space. But she also attributes it partially to the nature of Haines’ market.
“I think maybe in the lower 48 there’s less of a need for realtors when there’s so much marketing you can look at online,” she said. “I deal with a lot of people coming in from out of town who need someone to guide them, who need to know how much sun a property gets, and things you wouldn’t normally think of or be able to glean from a Zillow listing.”
The new office is equipped with a popcorn machine and Reigle’s family terrier, Nelson.
She operates in Juneau, Haines and Skagway and she’s taken her commute between the latter to Upper Lynn canal communities a step further than most, zipping across the Lynn Canal blasting indie rock by Warpaint on the back of her new Sea-Doo personal watercraft.
“On a flat, calm day I can get over [to Skagway] in 20 minutes,” she said. “It’s normally 45 minutes to an hour.”
To keep dry, she installed a windshield and squeezes into a drysuit before each commute.
“It’s usually very enjoyable,” she said. “I’ve learned which side to go up in the morning, which is where the sun shines. I’ve been hoping for a whale encounter; that hasn’t happened yet this year.”
Port Chilkoot Company
A 78-year-old Haines company was involuntarily dissolved by the state on Aug. 20, over what its president described as a paperwork issue.
“We didn’t get any notice from the state,” said Port Chilkoot Company president Lee Heinmiller.
Typically when a company is dissolved by the state, it’s due to a failure to file a required report, pay fees, or maintain an agent which can communicate for or receive paperwork about the business. The company hasn’t filed a biennial report with the state since 2022.
It’s not the first time the Port Chilkoot Company has been dissolved by the state. According to its license records it was dissolved on Sept. 23, 2021 as well.
An entity that has been involuntarily dissolved by the state can be reinstated as long as it happens in less than two years, according to the Division of Corporations, Business and Professional Licensing. It requires emailing the state division, filling out all of the forms and paying any outstanding fees.
The company owns an estimated 130 acres of land in Haines including the barracks building, hospital building and the building currently housing Deer Heart restaurant.
Borough staff in the lands department said they believed many of the deeds on Port Chilkoot Company land also had Heinmiller’s name on them so ownership would likely revert to him were the company to disappear.
However, Heinmiller described this as another paperwork issue which the borough hasn’t yet gotten around to cleaning up.
“I only own a few pieces of property,” he said. “The Port Chilkoot Company owns the rest. The assets belong to the stockholders in reality.”
According to its last biennial report, the company has issued 3,078 shares, though the Heinmiller family owns the majority.
“We still have a bunch of stray stockholders from back in the 1940s and 50s who owned, like, one or two shares,” he said.
The board has had a tumultuous few years. Infighting led to a shakeup in 2022 and the company’s majority shareholders voted to shrink its governing board to five members from nine. That included removing most members of the Gregg family, as well as former Haines mayor Fred Shields.
But Heinmiller described the board as stable now. He is still president, while two of his daughters, Carlee Heinmiller and Riley Steve, have joined the board as have Rahsaan Gregg and Christina Baskaya.
“Basically it’s all the younger generation except for me,” Heinmiller said.
Going forward, Heinmiller said the company is looking at developing a subdivision on land it owns between the Chilkoot Estates and Hill Top subdivisions along Major Road.
As part of the completion of the Hill Top subdivision, developer Roger Schnabel has run water, sewer and electricity nearby. Heinmiller said the Port Chilkoot company board hopes to market its four subdivided lots in the area now that it will be more cost effective to access utilities.
Haines Friends of Recycling
Haines Friends of Recycling and Haines Industrial have agreed to a cross-town swap that – when completed – will see the recycling facility move closer to town and Haines Industrial settle in on properties that border both sides of the Haines Highway.
Haines Friends of Recycling board chair Melissa Aronson said Haynes Tormey approached the nonprofit a few months ago with the idea that it might want to move its recycling center to his Third Avenue facility.
Tormey’s company, Haines Industrial, recently purchased Bigfoot Auto and he was looking to sell the Third Avenue location which is on a .94 acre plot of land.
“We spent a couple of months talking with him confidentially about how we could make this work and it came to pass that, because he’s at Bigfoot Auto, he’s very interested in the property we just bought on the Haines Highway because it’s right across the road there and very accessible to his new business,” Aronson said.
The move gets Friends of Recycling a step closer to moving out of a warehouse space it has been renting on Small Tracts Road for 25 years. For years, the nonprofit has pursued multiple parcels, including one near the public safety building and another near the landfill. The nonprofit also spent months trying to get land transferred from the borough as well.
Then last year, an anonymous donor helped the nonprofit by agreeing to buy the 1.69-acre Haines Highway plot.
“That donor is fine with the idea of us selling that and moving to this other location,” Aronson said.
The nonprofit board toured the Haines Industrial warehouse which Aronson described as about half-finished on the interior and needing some more cement flooring and other work.
But even with that work, Aronson said the nonprofit is saving a lot of money because – at last count – it was going to cost $3.3 million to build a new facility on the Haines Highway property.
“[That was] really kind of a Cadillac version of what we wanted and now we’re looking at settling for a Subaru version,” she said. “As those of us who drive them know, they’re perfectly functional and they work just fine, they’re just not flashy.”
The two entities agreed on the purchase terms the day before the nonprofit’s annual meeting on Saturday.
There’s still work to be done. The nonprofit needs to raise $1 million for the purchase of the property and another $100,000 to finish the inside. Currently, it has about $35,000 in a capital fund. Aronson said a donor has pledged a $50,000 match on donations through the end of December.
“We’re looking for other funding sources, including locally,” she said. “If we need to, we’re prepared to take out loans for anything we haven’t been able to raise. But, we’d rather raise the money and pay it off,” Aronson said.
She said they’re hoping to move into the new warehouse in the spring of 2026.
The Bottom Line follows how money, labor, and resources move through the Chilkat Valley – tracking new businesses, closures, nonprofit funding, and the work that holds it all together. Send tips, story leads, and your ideas about the local economy to [email protected]