Chiniak –less than 45 miles south of Kodiak – has a brand new mini-resort that opened this month. That comes after years of construction and recent zoning changes resulted in this property that the owners say could make Chiniak the “Girdwood of Kodiak”.
Roughly an hour drive away from Kodiak is a place aptly named “Friends by the Ocean”. Foxes, eagles and bears roam across Roslyn Beach in Chiniak. Nearby a handful of brand new structures overlook the roaring ocean.
For more than a decade an old winery and sawmill sat on this multi-lot property among the natural landscape, slowly decaying.
“I grew up here. I knew the winery was here; used to come to it, loved it, adored it. This property is my favorite on the whole island," Brenda Friend said.
But then Friend and her husband Jerrol bought the former Kodiak Island Winery from the Unification Church five years ago. Reverend Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church had bought the property from John and Judy Lucas years prior. Reverend Moon died in 2012 and Friend said the Chiniak property sat unused and unkempt for years after his death.
According to reporting from the Kodiak Daily Mirror, the winery that used to exist on the property shut down in 2008 due to noncompliance with local zoning. At the time the property was zoned as conservation and the Lucases requested it be rezoned to rural neighborhood commercial so they could operate the winery legally. But the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly voted the zoning change down in April of 2008.
“Problem was nothing was done by code. And he built it basically using wood that was milled here on the property, and it just didn’t last," Friend explained.
In November of 2023, the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly approved the same zoning change that was denied 15 years earlier. The Friends requested their roughly 30-acre property be rezoned from conservation to rural neighborhood commercial. This designation allows for veterinary clinics, motels, churches, restaurants, retail stores and more on their Chiniak property.
The Friends spent more than five years demolishing the old buildings and using some of the salvaged materials to build new guest cabins and an accompanying well house that provides water for everything on their five rezoned lots.
“We have the winery building here and a wellness center. We’ve got three cliffside cabins," she said. "We have two other cabins that you drove by that you didn’t even notice, because they’re very, very private and secure.”
And there’s more cabins to come according to the plans the family submitted to the planning and zoning commission in 2023.
Brenda Friend said she’s opening the existing five cabins to guests and the larger gathering house this month. And a local couple has the property booked for their wedding in August.
“This is why we built it. For people to come have a four-day weekend; it’s an anniversary, it’s a wedding venue, it’s a big retreat, and it’s refreshing and relaxing to just want to get away from town and the city and come out," she explained.
They’re charging roughly $500 a night for locals or tourists to stay in the cabins according to the website’s bookings page. The seven-bedroom house is listed at $800 a night.
Friend likens this Chiniak property outside of Kodiak to the Alyeska Resort in Girdwood, outside of the Anchorage bowl.
“I call Chiniak the Girdwood of Kodiak and we have the best restaurant [Olds River Inn] right down the street," Brenda Friend said. "We will have the nicest spa, the greatest view on the whole island. So that’s kind of what I’m focused on. Are we going to have guests from other areas? Absolutely.”
Despite Friend’s vision, some local residents expressed concerns to the Borough Assembly in 2023 about the uptick in traffic and people this local resort type property would bring to Chiniak. The rural community south of Kodiak has 55 residents according to the latest Census data from 2023.
In 2008 dozens of residents publicly opposed the rezoning of the old winery property for similar concerns over how it would affect the local lifestyle in the future according to reporting from the Kodiak Daily Mirror.
But no one objected during the recent Kodiak Island Borough Assembly’s public hearing on Friends By The Ocean’s winery manufacturer sampling endorsement on May 1.
Friend said the wellness center will eventually offer an endless pool, a juice bar and a red light therapy room.
The lobby entrance floor in the wellness center will be tiled with materials leftover from a job the Friend Contractors did at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson in Anchorage. The Friend family owns and operates their own contracting business, which Jerrol said comes in handy during a project like this.
“I’ve got so much stuff from different projects when we go around, I can show you," he said. "We recycle everything. I mean anything that Friend Contractors can, we reuse it, we recycle it.”
The Friends have also incorporated reused materials from different buildings around Kodiak, like part of the old roof from Peterson Elementary School, wood from the old city jail, and even a table from the original Kodiak Island winery. The husband and wife duo are also taking extra time to craft custom made stairs and handrails out of local driftwood from the beach. They’re in the process of firing the wood in their kiln on site. That drying process can take a couple weeks or more depending on the size and type of wood according to Jerrol Friend.
They’ve applied for a state license that would allow them to offer free samples of wine. The Friends plan to serve salmonberry, blueberry and rhubarb flavored wine, like the old winery did. Under the Lucases, the Kodiak Island Winery won awards for its wine, which came in a variety of flavors, including a 2003 state Manufacturer of the Year award.
