Girdwood's new parks plan rests partly on land the town doesn't clearly have the right to use

Girdwood's parks master plan won approval from Anchorage's planning commission Monday, even though parts of it sit on land the community hasn't secured, including a parking lot built on state ground without a permit and trails that cross the local airport with no easements.

The state raised both. The Alaska Department of Transportation flagged the unpermitted parking lot at Girdwood Park and the undesignated trails at Moose Meadow Park, and commissioners weighed making the state's concerns a formal condition of approval before deciding not to. One commissioner said she wouldn't support the plan without it.

Girdwood offered to fix one problem but not the other. Peyton Johnson of Girdwood Parks and Recreation said the community would pull the unauthorized trails, telling the commission, "we are comfortable with making all of those changes to address DOT's comments." The parking lot is another matter. Johnson said there's no plan under this document to resolve it, leaving a piece of built parkland sitting on state land without permission.

The airport piece may be the hardest to untangle. The state said any land swap to legitimize the trails crossing airport property would mean handing the municipality the entire airport, an all-or-nothing condition that turns a trail easement into a question of who owns the airfield.

A second dispute runs through Glacier Creek, where the parks plan places parkland and a disc golf course on ground the Girdwood Comprehensive Plan sets aside for mixed-use development. A city planner told the commission the parks plan doesn't override the comprehensive plan, and that the department would still support rezoning the area for mixed use. Johnson said parks are allowed in mixed-use zones anyway, that much of the ground is floodplain, and that the most developable land stays available for development.

The approval isn't final until the conflicts are resolved. The only person to testify, Brian Burnett of the Girdwood Board of Supervisors, urged approval as presented but couldn't answer the commission's questions about the state's objections.