Wrangell business owners, their employees and the community at large have had a lot to be pessimistic about the past few decades: The population has been in decline, school enrollment is half of what it was in the mid-1990s, the workforce is aging and employers cannot find enough younger people to fill their vacant jobs.

The decline started with the shutdown of the town’s two sawmills and area logging camps, and grew as the state pulled jobs out of Wrangell and school district staff shrunk to live within a smaller budget.

Just based on birth and death rates and tracking the pace at which people move out of town — not accounting for any change in Wrangell’s economy — the state last year forecast that the population would drop from 2,000 down to around 1,400 by 2050.

No wonder a collective gloom hung over the community’s economic outlook, just as low clouds hang over the town much of the fall.

But maybe there is a break in the cloud cover.

A Juneau-based economics data and consulting firm, Rain Coast Data, has been surveying Southeast businesses since 2010, asking their outlook on the economy, hiring and on problems that stand in the way of both. Wrangell’s responses to the survey have been dour in recent years.

But this year was different.

“Wrangell stands out for its dramatic shift in sentiment, moving from among the weakest outlooks in recent years to one of the strongest in 2026,” according to the report.

“Wrangell’s improved outlook appears tied to expanding economic development opportunities and infrastructure investment,” according to the Southeast Alaska Business Climate Report 2026.

Maybe it’s because the borough is making a strong push to remake the publicly owned property at 6-Mile into a deepwater industrial port, maybe even with a privately owned and operated shipyard.

Maybe it’s because all 20 lots at the borough-developed Alder Top Keishangita.’aan subdivision upland from Shoemaker Bay sold out this year, with four more parcels planned for sale later this year.

It could be this year’s higher cruise ship visitor count, which could tally more than 70,000, after 40,000 last summer.

Or it could be street repair projects, new roofs on their way for all of the school buildings and repairs to the Public Safety Building. Or maybe more people were in a better mood when they completed the survey in April, when there was little to no rain on half the days.

No matter, a little optimism is a welcome change.