There’s still no concrete offer, but the outlines of a possible deal for Global Ports Holding to lease the Port Chilkoot cruise ship dock have started to take shape.
Borough officials announced late last month that Global Ports, the self-described largest cruise ship terminal management company in the world, was interested in adding Haines to its global portfolio.
The news of the company’s interest didn’t come with any formal offer, just an understanding that it wanted to take over management of the dock, along with its revenues, in exchange for some kind of compensation.
Global Ports Holding’s regional head of business development Colin Murphy presented to a full crowd during a Thursday meeting in the assembly chambers, but didn’t bring any concrete offer. But Murphy did give some new indication of what residents might expect.
The Global Ports Offer
How does the community stand to benefit from a deal?
Murphy said it likely won’t be in the form of lump sum payments into borough coffers. Rather, Global Ports is offering two indirect benefits.
The first is a large increase in annual passenger counts in Haines, and by extension, increased passenger spending at local businesses. Murphy referred to that local spending as the “main upside” in the deal, and talked about a rough goal of 300,000 annual passengers. That would be a roughly 4-fold increase over the 67,000 Haines saw last year.
Business owners in the room Thursday spoke in favor of that prospect:
“We used to have 25 to 30 employees,” Pioneer Bar and Bamboo Room owner Christy Tengs-Fowler said to Murphy. “We have a building that could serve hundreds of people a day but it’s just sitting there. It’s not sustainable, and businesses are going to close… I feel lucky you came here and I hope we listen and learn and try to work with you. To me it’s like a godsend.”
Others said they would expand their operations if cruise ship numbers increased significantly, like Mike Ward, who said he would open a new restaurant.
The borough’s tourism department could try to increase cruise ship numbers without Global Ports, like it did in the late 1990s. Haines’ all-time biggest cruise season was in 2000 with 187,397 passengers.
But Murphy said Global Ports would bring with them a number of advantages for attracting more traffic. For one, he said, the company would have better access to cruise lines — touting its ability to negotiate with cruise line executives — which could help market Haines as a destination. That’s something Hylton and borough manager Alekka Fullerton have spoken to as well, with Fullerton saying this week the borough “doesn’t have a lot of bargaining power and (Hylton) is just one person to negotiate with cruise lines.”
Murphy also said cruise lines would be more likely to come if Haines improved in two areas, attractions and dock facilities — areas Global Ports said it would target investment. On attractions, Murphy said Global Ports would “identify other things we could create” outside of the currently-popular tours around Chilkoot Lake, “preferably in partnership with locals, that would attract people to that spot,” giving the example of a zipline.
A possible dock upgrade
The improved dock facilities would be the main area Global Ports would be putting down money. If a deal is struck, the company plans to fund construction of a floating section of the Port Chilkoot Dock, which would allow more ships to tie on to the dock rather than ferrying passengers to shore in lifeboats.
That’s a project the borough has long been considering doing on its own, and if Global Ports puts up the $20 million or more needed, by Murphy’s estimate, it could save taxpayers some cash.
But the equation is more complicated than the borough simply gaining back however much money the company puts down.
The borough already has money available for the project that couldn’t necessarily be spent elsewhere. A design proposal recommended by harbormaster Henry Pollan last summer had the project with a $18.5 million price tag.
Toward that figure, the borough is expected to receive $3 million in state money this year specifically for the project. Past years of still-unspent state funding for the project currently total around $755,000, said borough finance director Jila Stuart. The borough also projects to have $1.8 million in banked Port Chilkoot Dock revenue at the end of this year, which can only be spent on Port Chilkoot Dock Improvements.
Finally, if the current annual dock revenue stays steady, it could pay for annual debt service on around $10 million in bonds for the project, Stuart said.
The bigger question
With a deal, Global Ports stands to take on that dock project, plus regular dock maintenance costs, plus some amount of annual rent to the borough — though the rent would likely be small, Murphy said. In return, the company gets one main thing: it would collect the tax on the cruise passengers currently being collected by the borough. “Anything you charge cruise lines for, we would charge and collect,” Murphy said. By boosting passenger numbers potentially four- or five-fold, it could dramatically increase that profit for itself.
So in one sense, by leasing the dock, the company is leasing the borough’s taxation power. And in exchange, residents would have to give up some control over cruise ship management, and manage the higher volume of tourism.
That gets at a main potential sticking point for the deal for some in the Chilkat Valley: how much tourism is too much?
There are people like Ward and Tengs-Fowler who have spoken to the upsides. Some at the meeting said any increase would be too much, resulting in pollution and crowding.
Tour operator Ken Gross said an increase would have to be done the right way. Gross pointed to Skagway as a warning case: there, cruise line-owned White Pass Railroad is the target of a lot of tourist spending, the Skagway Borough faces legal challenges from cruise lines on how much sales tax it can charge, and “you can’t even drive down the road with all the congestion,” Gross said.
Gross also referenced Hoonah’s Icy Strait Point: “Slowly but surely the cruise lines have bought up the whole thing now and the sellers have changed,” he said. “Haines has to watch out for that. It’s sad, it was wonderful when they first started.”
Still, Gross said, he was supportive of exploring the Global Ports opportunity.
Others cited past opposition to high cruise ship volume, and a 2025 survey in which only 16% of residents responding said they wanted a “much higher” volume of cruise visitors.
But cruise ships could be an attractive alternative to other also-controversial industries, like logging and mining, that have been pitched as economic growth areas.
“If you have an economy, and you want to pin yourself to an industry, and you want a reliable partner that’s going to be around, that’s not going to leave in ten years, you could do a lot worse than the cruise industry,” said Murphy.
Next Steps
There’s likely some amount of time pressure: Murphy said after the meeting that Global Ports is talking to other communities in the region about similar deals, and advised the borough to move quickly. His company, he said, hopes to start operating the dock next summer.
So it seems Haines has competition for a Global Ports deal, adding pressure to what assembly member Cheryl Stickler called a “potentially once in a lifetime opportunity,” on Thursday.
On the other hand, it could be that Global Ports has competition, as well, for a Haines deal.
When Global Ports approached Ketchikan with a deal six years ago, it was in response to a Ketchikan city council request for proposal, which a Ketchikan company, Survey Point Holdings, also responded to.
Fullerton said Friday she didn’t know if other companies could offer similar deals to Global Ports’, either now or down the line, but said she was open to putting out a request for quote soliciting proposals from companies.
“The first step is to see if the community is interested in general in this kind of public-private partnership,” Fullerton said. “But I definitely want to see what’s out there.”