Kenai planners to weigh dropping park status from a lot that never became a park

Kenai's Planning and Zoning Commission votes Tuesday on whether to recommend the city stop calling a 2.32-acre lot a park.

Carl F. Ahlstrom Park, between Iliamna Road and Spur Drive, was set aside for parks in 2004 but has never been developed as one. Dropping the designation would let the city move toward selling or leasing it, and city planners say that could help reshape the neighborhood's lots for housing.

The city's parks commission backed the change 5-0 on Nov. 5. The planning commission's vote is also a recommendation. The City Council has the final say and is scheduled to vote Nov. 18.

The subdivision around it has never been fully built out. The Carl F. Ahlstrom Subdivision was platted in the 1950s and sold off to many owners, Planning Director Kevin Buettner told the parks commission.

"We haven't been able to develop because we don't have like one single developer going in, putting in roads, water, sewer, that sort of thing," he said.

Buettner wrote in a memo that the park lot could be a catalyst for reworking the subdivision's lots into a layout that's easier to sell for housing. Any sale or lease would still have to go through the city's disposal process, he told the parks commission.

The city's first parks master plan, adopted in June, didn't call for a park there. Planners instead pointed to a city parcel between the Mommsens and Kenai Meadows subdivisions along Redoubt Avenue, once meant for a community well and now served by water and sewer.

"We just think a park is a better fit closer into the middle of those larger subdivisions," Buettner said.