Anchorage's park rezone meets the Knik Arm bridge route

Anchorage wants to turn 7.9 acres above the Don Young Port of Alaska into a park. The state wants to keep the option of running a bridge across it. Those two positions are decades old, and the rezone the Assembly takes up Tuesday is the newest round.

The Knik Arm Crossing has been a state and Mat-Su priority for decades, meant to link Anchorage to developable land across the water. Anchorage has spent much of that time resisting it, suing to stop the project in 2011 and later moving to strip it from the city's long-range transportation plan. The project has been shelved since 2016. The right-of-way has not gone anywhere.

Part of the parcel sits on that mapped route. As Alaska News reported this month, calling the site a park would put it under Section 4(f), a federal protection that makes public parkland considerably harder for a highway project to take than an old industrial lot.

The transportation department has objected to the rezone, calling it premature until the land is formally split in two and warning it would otherwise "create a split zone parcel not allowed under Title 21." That split is already before the Platting Board, which would divide the 48-acre tract, leaving one piece heavy industrial and setting the other aside for the park. The rezone takes effect only once the new plat is recorded.

Tuesday is an introduction, not a decision. The public hearing where residents can testify is Oct. 6.

The Planning and Zoning Commission recommended approval in July, planning staff find the rezone meets the city's criteria, and Anchorage's 2040 land use plan already designates the site as park or natural area. The Assembly dedicated the land as parkland in two earlier ordinances. Government Hill, the neighborhood above the port and the community council of record, backs the park and has long opposed a bridge landing there.