Daily Sitka Sentinel

Documentary Focuses on Cruise Issues

By SHANNON HAUGLAND

Sentinel Staff Writer

How will next year’s expected 478,000 cruise ship visitors affect Sitka?

What are the potential benefits and negative impacts?

How can Sitka prepare?

Filmmaker Ellen Frankenstein doesn’t know the answers – and maybe no one else does – but that’s not really the point of the new Artchange documentary “Cruise Boom.”

The first two “chapters” of the “documentary with evolving chapters” were released today on artchangeinc.org. They are called “Preparation“ and “Benefits and Impacts.”

“We’re aiming to follow what happens over the next year and a half,” said Frankenstein, who has more than 30 years of documentary filmmaking under her belt. “We don’t know what’s going to happen, but in the meanwhile we can generate conversation and dialogue and get people thinking. We’re not telling you what to think.”

Familiar faces featured in the film include Assembly members, Planning Commission members and multiple representatives of businesses and nonprofits connected to tourism. (The Planning Commission is currently working on addressing the influx in the short and long term.) 

At one point in the documentary Assembly member Crystal Duncan goes over the issues presented by large increases in cruise visitors:

“You’re looking at things related to, how do we entertain them, how do we take care of them, how do we give them a positive experience?” she said. “But on the flip side, what about local residents?”

“The other thing is jobs,” said a Sitkan who works in retail. “There’s a lot of jobs out there that aren’t filled now, so how do you prepare for next year?”

Lisa Busch, director of the Sitka Sound Science Center, pointed to the problems of filling positions and affordable housing.

“We’re really excited to have visitors, but we’re just not ready. We’re not prepared,” Busch said. “The worst case scenario is that (Sitka) is not ready and so the experience is not good. The best case scenario is this remains a wonderful visitor destination and a great community to live in.” 

Dozens of other questions and potential problems and benefits are raised throughout the documentary. 

Also in the films, Chris McGraw, manager of the Sitka Sound Cruise Terminal, weighs in with his concerns about keeping Sitka livable.

“I feel like it’s partially our responsibility because we built this facility and are bringing the people in, and the last thing we want to do is say: ‘here you go, we’re dropping them all off at the light in downtown Sitka, and you deal with them.’ And I don’t want people to view the cruise ship passengers as a negative,” he said.

Atman Mehta, who is helping on the project, told the Sentinel that the idea is to document the present and get people looking ahead.

“This is a way we can talk about the influx of tourists next year. It’s a start, to think and to participate on how next summer goes,” he said. “It might raise ideas on how to evaluate and understand. And maybe to participate in public meetings, be part of the decisions on how the town is going to respond.”

Mehta, a 2021 graduate of the University of Chicago, is working on a documentary on a community outside Nome facing coastal erosion, in addition to helping Frankenstein on the Sitka documentary.

“A lot of documentaries are retrospective,” he said, while this one is “documenting the present and trying to keep up with things as they happen and try to get people to look forward.”

Frankenstein said her series will be “scratching the surface of a big issue. They’re works in progress.”

Frankenstein said she started thinking about this project with the arrival of the massive cruise liner Ovation of the Seas at the end of the summer, marking the end of a year with no visits by the major cruise lines.

“We all had that super quiet time with less tourists,” she said. She started hearing that next year may bring up to 400,000 cruise visitors.

What struck her was not only the staggering number of visitors in the forecast – much higher than Sitka has had in the past – but that the estimates kept rising, reaching 478,000.

“It just kept going up,” she said.

Frankenstein said such a huge influx of summertime cruise visitors has the potential of changing the town – for better or worse – and she wanted to tell that story.

“It’s meant to be a snapshot in time,” she said. “Documentaries made over time can show a transformation and help us look at what’s there. This isn’t statistical: I like to say documentaries are like rearranging the furniture – it’s moving it around to see things differently.”

Frankenstein said the experience she had with creating episodes in a “14 miles” series prompted her to go in a similar direction with “Cruise Boom,” at least at the outset. The first two episodes are less than 10 minutes each.

Frankenstein says she doesn’t know how the series will evolve.

The films were released for viewing online, and she’s hoping for community screenings and discussions starting sometime in January.

“We welcome feedback, and appreciate all the participants to date,” she said.