A Parks Highway gas station, ahead of the state's traffic review

Wasilla planning staff are recommending approval of a new convenience store and gas station on the Parks Highway, even though the state has not finished deciding whether the project's access onto the highway works.

The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities reviewed the application and told the developer to keep working through a traffic impact analysis with its right-of-way and traffic safety offices to determine highway access and any required mitigation. The applicant has to secure DOT&PF approval separately, whatever the commission decides Tuesday.

The context is a corridor the state is actively trying to constrain. The Parks Highway through Wasilla is among the most congested in the borough, and DOT&PF is planning medians on the city's west side to block most left turns from the center lane after dozens of collisions in recent years. The agency has studied routing traffic around Wasilla since the 1980s.

The proposal, from SAJJ, Inc. on behalf of KG Enterprises LLC, is an 11-thousand-square-foot store on nearly six acres at 1451 W. Parks Highway, with 30 parking spaces, an on-site septic system, and a second driveway onto W. Nicola Avenue.