Anchorage proposes trading the Tozier Track to the state housing agency for downtown parking lots, with housing required

The old sled dog track on Tudor Road where the first Iditarod started in 1973 could become housing under a land trade now before the Anchorage Assembly.

The city would give the 9.6-acre former Tozier Track to the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, the state's housing agency, which would have to build homes on most of it. In return, Anchorage would get four downtown parking lots the corporation owns, totaling 1.6 acres.

The city has owned the track only since 2021. It got the land from the sled dog racing association that ran it, trading away another parcel and adding $2.35 million. City plans had called for acquiring the site since 1985.

Because the deal is a trade and not a sale, it does not go out to bid. City code lets the Heritage Land Bank, which manages city-owned land, trade property as long as it gets back land of at least equal appraised value. The Tozier parcel appraised at about $4.1 million and the downtown lots at about $5.2 million, so the city would receive the higher-appraised land.

The trade comes with conditions. At least 70% of either site must go to housing, with parking, playgrounds, parks and landscaping counting toward that share. Housing areas must have at least eight homes per acre, which city staff compare to two-family zoning. The downtown lots would join the land bank's inventory and could later be sold or leased under its normal rules, with any profit going back to the land bank. City staff wrote that the land bank should have a chance to be made whole for what it paid for the track.

The trade is not in the land bank's current work plan or its five-year plan, which say only that staff will start evaluating the track for future disposal. The same ordinance that approves the trade would rewrite that plan to allow the land to be sold, traded or leased.

The land bank's advisory commission voted unanimously in August to recommend the trade. Two people wrote in against it.

Lauren Hendrix, whose family owns property next to the downtown lots, wrote that the land should be tested on the open market, where neighbors, private buyers and the public could bid. She wrote that using one measure both to approve the trade and to change the plan that would otherwise block it suggests a process "structured to reach a predetermined outcome." She wrote that she supports encouraging housing, but not by skipping competitive bidding.

Marta Mueller also doubted the two sides are equal in value. She wrote that state employees at the Atwood Building park on the downtown lots every day and gather there during emergencies and drills, and that there is no plan to replace that parking.

The state transportation department said it had no objection to the land use change. It warned, though, that housing on the Tozier site would likely block or sharply limit reviving plans to extend Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and connect roads to Piper and Grumman streets.

In a separate step, the Planning and Zoning Commission voted Sept. 21 to recommend marking the Tozier site on the city's long-range land use map as a town center suited to transit-friendly development. City planners say that is not a rezoning. The commission's final resolution comes back Oct. 19. The site was part of a similar map change last year but was pulled for more review.

The Anchorage Community Development Authority negotiated the trade for the mayor's office. The ordinance was introduced Sept. 1, and the Assembly has not yet held its public hearing. The Assembly's next regular meetings are Oct. 6 and Oct. 20.