AFTER-SCHOOL PRACTICE – Keet Gooshi Heen fifth-graders, from left, Caitlin Erler, Malia DeGuzman and Virginia Nettles play flute in the school band room Thursday during an after-school rehearsal. The Fifth Grade band “Almost Spring” Concert will be held 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Performing Arts Center. The concert is free and open to the public. (Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)
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Daily Sitka Sentinel
Bear Market Looking Good for Sitka Fortress
By TOM HESSE
Sentinel Staff Writer
Sitka’s Fortress of the Bear has grown in popularity in recent years, which means it has to expand its operations to accommodate the increased traffic.
First on the list? Giving visitors a little more elbow room on the observation deck.
“We can’t complain, because we’re on the good side of it. But there were days last year when people were really packed in up there,” Evy Kinnear, who runs the Fortress with her husband Les, told the Chamber of Commerce, Wednesday.
Les and Evy Kinnear are looking to expand their bear rescue operation and the related tourist attraction into a larger area with new facilities and new programs. But first on the list is expanding the observation deck, which is at the top of the “habitat” enclosure where the bears live.
Les Kinnear said the expansion will increase the available viewing area by 40 percent. And like the other improvements the Kinnears have made at the Fortress, it will be built with found and reused materials.
“Everything has been reused from whatever was around and that’s how we’ve been able to sustain what we’ve done,” Evy said.
Since the Kinnears opened the facility in 2002, the Fortress has housed 13 bears, five of which were relocated to zoos in New York, Texas and Montana.
The facility includes two giant masonry enclosures that were built at waste water clarifiers when the area, now part of the Gary Paxton Industrial Park, was the site of the Alaska Pulp Corp. pulp mill.
Evy said she and Les would like to begin rehabilitating bears for release back into the wild. That – and an expansion of their current facility – is on their list of long-term goals. To get there the Kinnears are eyeing a purchase of the Fortress property that they presently lease from the city at $50 a month.
The Gary Paxton Industrial Park Board of Directors, which oversees the land at the industrial park, is open to selling the land, although paperwork related to a federal easement in the area is holding up the process.
Evy Kinnear (Sentinel Photo)
The operation has been housed in the old clarifier tanks from the APC mill since 2002. Evy said the group has transformed the area considerably but is always looking at improvements.
“We’ve done a lot of work but it still has an industrial look about it. We would love to change that,” Evy said.
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20 YEARS AGO
March 2005
Jonathan Krebs, Sitka Economic Development Association director, said today he’s resigning to take a job in Ottumwa, Iowa. Krebs, who also is manager of the Sawmill Cove Industrial Park, has held the SEDA post for five years.
50 YEARS AGO
March 1975
Gerry Helland of Sitka has been selected by the coaches to referee at the Alaska State High School Basketball Championships in Anchorage this weekend. Sitka and Wrangell are representing Southeast at the tourney.
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