Tenants living in Juneau’s historic Telephone Hill neighborhood had until last weekend to move out.
But some didn’t, and three of them are now suing the city to reverse the evictions. At the same time, city officials are discussing the next steps for the downtown neighborhood’s redevelopment into new, denser housing.
The city’s Nov. 1 eviction date for Telephone Hill tenants has come and gone, and now, the city is laying out the plan for what lies ahead for the neighborhood.
“It is really the only piece of property that is large enough to be able to support maximum density housing and really move the needle on housing in Juneau,” City Manager Katie Koester said at a Juneau Assembly committee meeting Monday night.
She and Assembly members discussed what’s next for the controversial redevelopment project.
The discussion came just days after three tenants living on Telephone Hill filed a joint civil lawsuit against the city on Halloween, seeking to reverse the evictions. City leaders did not mention the lawsuit at the meeting.
The plaintiffs claim the city improperly evicted people on the hill, illegally phased the redevelopment and that the project fails to comply with federal and state historic preservation acts.
Joe Karson is one of the plaintiffs. He’s 80 years old and, as of Tuesday, hadn’t moved out of his apartment on the hill.
“They came and told me today that I have to be out by eight o’clock tomorrow morning, and I won’t be,” Karson said.
He says he plans to fight the evictions and demolition as long as possible. He pointed out that the city doesn’t have a developer lined up yet.
“The idea is that at some point, someone will build something — that’s their idea of a project? What on earth is that?” he said.
City Attorney Emily Wright says the city’s law department is reviewing the lawsuit and plans to file a response shortly. She says the city believes it has no merit.
All of the residents of Telephone Hill were renters and had been since the state took ownership of the neighborhood in the 1980s. The state transferred ownership to the city in 2023. Last year, the Assembly voted to redevelop the neighborhood to build denser housing on prime downtown real estate to ease Juneau’s housing crunch.
The city wants to find a developer willing to build four mid-rise apartments, which could create an estimated 155 new housing units. But, right now, there’s no developer signed onto the project.
“This is a unique gem that a community doesn’t get an opportunity very often to have property so centrally located with utilities with infrastructure in their community,” Koester said.
According to a 2024 assessment, Juneau is in immediate need of at least 400 new housing units.
The project has come with a lot of pushback from local advocates. That’s in part due to the history of the hill — it was home to Alaska’s first commercial telephone service, and many of its houses were a part of the original Juneau townsite in the late 1800s. All seven structures are slated for demolition this winter.
This past spring, the Assembly approved spending $5.5 million to tear them down and prepare the land for new buildings. The Assembly chose to front that cost in order to attract developers and tack on some affordable housing requirements.
Koester said the city plans to select a developer early next year so that construction can begin in 2027.
At Monday’s meeting, she spoke to an audience filled with advocates against the plan. She said that the decision to redevelop the neighborhood is not an easy one, but added it has the potential to dramatically move the needle on the city’s lack of housing availability and affordability.
“Telephone Hill really does represent some of the most developable property, well-located in our community, and it’s been really hard to struggle with those decisions,” Koester said.
According to Wright, as of Tuesday tenants are still occupying three residences on Telephone Hill. The city plans to take legal action against those tenants on Wednesday.