Kenai parks commission backs dropping park status from Ahlstrom Park lot

Kenai's Parks and Recreation Commission voted 5-0 Thursday to recommend the City Council remove the park designation from Carl F. Ahlstrom Park, a 2.32-acre triangle of undeveloped city land north of Redoubt Avenue. The change would clear the way for the city to lease or sell the lot for development, such as housing.

The vote was the step Alaska News reported Oct. 29 the commission would take. Planning Director Kevin Buettner said the park dates to the 1950s, when the subdivision east of the Kenai Spur Highway was platted and sold to many owners. No single developer ever built roads, water or sewer there. "We realize that that's really a hard place to get into for any kind of development," he said.

The city got the lot in 2001 after a Kenai Peninsula Borough tax foreclosure, and a 2004 ordinance kept it for a future park, according to the city's 2022 land management plan. The commission packet says the city's first parks master plan, adopted in June, did not recommend a park in the subdivision.

Buettner said the triangle could be used to make neighboring lots bigger, possibly big enough for on-site water and septic systems, which could bring houses to the area. Any lease or sale would still have to go through the city's usual process, he said.

Planners pointed instead to a 4.24-acre parcel to the east, once set aside for a community well. Water and sewer lines now run through that area. The packet calls it a potential park site more centrally located among homes along the Redoubt corridor. The city would not designate it as parkland now, Buettner said, but a large developer might build a park there as part of a project.

"This would kind of be, for lack of a better term, like a central park in that neighborhood," he said. He said the city owns about 64 acres to the northeast that he expects, once subdivided, to become "the next Inlet Woods," a Kenai subdivision.

One commissioner noted the Redoubt corridor has a multiuse trail but no parks. Buettner said Fourth Avenue Park is the city's northernmost park. Another commissioner said the triangle sits near mechanic shops and storage lots, while the eastern parcel is closer to homes and apartments and seems better suited for a park.

"We didn't want to ask you to take away a potential park without giving you a potential alternative in that same area," Buettner said.

The commission also recommended the city's updated land management plan Thursday.

The City Council introduced the ordinance Wednesday and will hold a public hearing Nov. 18. The Planning and Zoning Commission holds its own hearing Nov. 17.