Anchorage Assembly weighs selling Westpark school site for housing

The Anchorage Assembly will consider a resolution Tuesday stating its intent to sell the 53.8-acre Westpark school site in Southwest Anchorage for housing. The resolution would send net proceeds to the Anchorage School District.

Mayor Suzanne LaFrance requested the resolution. It sits on the consent agenda, reserved for routine items that need no public hearing.

Proceeds would go to the district "to the maximum extent allowable" once it submits a supplemental budget showing how it would spend them. The resolution says the district still expects a significant deficit in 2027-28, despite about $32.19 million in state "waterfall" money under House Bill 263 that let it reverse some cuts this year. On Sept. 15 the School Board voted 5-2 to hold about $17.6 million of that money to preserve roughly 123 teaching positions next year. Chief Finance Officer Andrew Ratliff told the board the amended plan still leaves a projected 2027-28 deficit of about $6 million, with more cuts needed, according to the board's recap.

Declining enrollment led the district to close six schools. That makes a new school at Westpark unlikely, the resolution says.

The resolution is nonbinding. It is meant to inform the School Board before it decides whether to declare Westpark excess and return its management to the city. Any sale would require a separate ordinance, notice to the Sand Lake Community Council and the Federation of Community Councils, and a public hearing.

The district bought Westpark in 2008 for $6.25 million, according to the board's Sept. 1 recap. The site was assembled from land bought with a 2003 voter-approved school bond, about 2 acres from the city's Heritage Land Bank, and other city parcels, then replatted in 2018.

The resolution asks the Heritage Land Bank Advisory Commission to waive any claim to those 2 acres, which the district bought for $475,000. City code required a clause returning the land if it was not used as intended. Enforcing that clause after the replat would require platting, survey and subdivision work "at public expense," with "no corresponding public benefit," the resolution says. It asks the commission, with the municipal attorney, to send the Assembly a memorandum within 45 days.

The Assembly approved selling Tract 2 in 2018. That parcel remains unsold.