Girdwood Comp Plan final vote likely Tuesday

Assembly to Decide on Future of Wild, Public Lands in Girdwood. Final Vote On Comp Plan Likely Tuesday, Following Public Testimony

Testimony on the Assembly's can be given in writing, in person or over the phone. In order to give testimony via a phone, a form needs to be completed by 5 p.m. Monday, Feb. 24. 

By Soren Wuerth

TNews Editor

The Anchorage Assembly may make its final ruling Tuesday night on a sweeping plan that charts the course of land use in the valley for years to come.

At stake are two wild areas that Girdwood's community wants to protect as open space but that Anchorage's planning department has targeted for housing.

The Assembly will decide the fate of nearly 100 acres of old-growth forested land between Glacier Creek and the Alyeska Resort that the resort's owner, Pomeroy, has included in its development plans.

"This is the last public hearing and I expect them to make a decision," said Mike Edgington, the chair of Imagine!Girdwood, an organization formed to guide a 30-year-old plan through a public process that, organizers say, had contributions from 900 Girdwood residents.

Edgington predicts there will be three versions of plan on the table for discussion by the Assembly Tuesday night: a version with changes by the muni's planning department, an "S" version that sustains Girdwood's original plan calling for open space in the contested areas, and, possibly a new "S1" version that could "narrow down" housing allotments.

The planning department and Pomeroy won a vote from an advisory panel last summer that allows for the Canadian company to develop housing and other amenities in an area designated for "open space" and trails. 

Testimony so far has been almost universal in support of a land plan that includes open space and housing near pre-existing development. 

Earlier this year, representatives from the muni's planning department met with Imagine!Girdwood's board to recommend five changes including eliminating size allowances for vegetative buffer strips called for in Girdwood's plan, some technical changes in parcel sizes, and adding a 500-foot strip of housing on the western edge of Alyeska Basin of up to 30 lots, Edgington said.

The planning department also continued to take issue with the Girdwood Plan's allocation of remote and wild public land—called "the mitten" for its shape on a map"—as open space and recommended its designation as mixed use allowing Pomeroy to build 365 housing units. 

Planners said in a memo to Imagine!Girdwood that Pomeroy's housing would address a "severe housing shortage". 

"The shortage has been described as 'crises' that forces locals out," the memo states.

Yet, in order to build enough housing in Girdwood that will yield year-round occupancy, the community would have to add 2,000 residences over the next decade, Edgington said, since 85 percent of homes being built are so-called "dark homes". 

"We have loads of housing. It's just that most of it is empty," he said.

There will likely be a final vote on the comprehensive plan Tuesday and it is the public's last chance to give testimony, Edgington said. 

"This is like a battle, an important battle. It may be a decisive battle. But it's not the final battle," he said. "But I don't like war analogies."

Testimony on the Assembly's can be given in writing, in person or over the phone. In order to give testimony via a phone, a form needs to be completed by 5 p.m. Monday, Feb. 24.