Anchorage land bank panel votes Thursday on recommending the Tozier Track trade

Anchorage would give up 9.6 acres it spent $2.35 million to finish buying five years ago, in exchange for four downtown surface parking lots, under a resolution the Heritage Land Bank Advisory Commission takes up at a public hearing Thursday at 1:30 p.m. The commission's vote on Resolution 2026-05 would only recommend that the Anchorage Assembly approve the exchange; the Assembly is scheduled to take the matter up itself at an Aug. 28 worksession before any final decision.

The trade sends the former Tozier Track south of Tudor Road and Dale Street in the U-Med District, to Alaska Housing Finance Corporation. The Municipality receives Block 102, roughly 1.6 acres southwest of West 8th Avenue and D Street. The Tozier parcel is appraised at about $4.125 million and Block 102 at about $5.24 million. No money bridges the $1.115 million difference, which runs in the Municipality's favor, and the staff report says no direct impact to the land bank fund is anticipated.

Buying the parcel was a municipal priority named in the 1985 Far North Bicentennial Park plan and the 2007 3500 Tudor Road Master Plan. The land bank finally acquired it in 2021 through a land exchange with the Alaska Sled Dog Racing Association, according to a staff report prepared by Land Management Officer Ryan Yelle. The $2.35 million came from the land bank fund on top of the land traded.

The exchange is not authorized in the adopted 2026 Annual Work Program or the 2027-2031 Five-Year Management Plan, which contemplate only evaluating the parcel for entitlements. Resolution 2026-05 amends the work program in the same motion. Structuring the transfer as an exchange also avoids the competitive bid a sale would require under land bank rules. Sales must go to open competitive bid for at least appraised fair market value; an exchange need only be on "at least an equal value basis," which the incoming parcel's higher appraisal satisfies.

Municipal notices also describe the deal's counterparties inconsistently. The Assembly's public notice names the Anchorage Community Development Authority as the counterparty in the trade, while the Heritage Land Bank's own materials for Thursday's hearing name Alaska Housing Finance Corporation as the recipient, with the Anchorage Community Development Authority acting only as the negotiator on behalf of the Mayor's Office.

The state objected. "Should the subject property be transferred to AHFC and subsequently redeveloped for residential use, it would likely preclude or substantially limit the feasibility of reestablishing these previously planned transportation projects," Anchorage Area Planner Mark Eisenman of the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities wrote on July 20. Those projects are the shelved Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue extension and connections to Piper and Grumman streets. The Municipality's own Right of Way Section, in a review by Senior Plan Reviewer Michael S. Walters, wrote that it has "no objections or comments concerning the proposed land trade with AHFC."

Four conditions attach:

• At least 70 percent of either site developed as residential dwellings

• A minimum of eight dwelling units per acre

• Block 102 placed in land bank inventory

• Profits from Block 102 deposited into the land bank fund

The land bank's own study of what the Tozier parcel should become is not finished. Its final report is due late August or early September, after Thursday's vote.