Kodiak staff urge keeping Beaver Lake land as the borough hunts for housing sites

Kodiak's borough manager wants to open a strip of borough land along Beaver Lake to housing development. The borough's own planning staff are telling the commission not to.

The Planning and Zoning Commission decides Wednesday whether to recommend subdividing roughly 4.7 acres fronting Beaver Lake Drive and Selief Lane — a recommendation that would then go to the Assembly, which makes the final call. Two competing resolutions are on the table, one for disposal and one for keeping the land.

The case for selling is the housing shortage. The manager submitted the application on the recommendation of the borough lands committee, which has been combing through borough parcels looking for anything developable. The disposal resolution argues these portions are among the most buildable the borough has, with road and utility access already there — and the City of Kodiak has told staff its water and sewer mains along both streets could serve homes on the site.

Staff see it differently. Both parcels are zoned Natural Use, designated as open space in a 1997 subarea plan and again as Natural Use in the 2008 comprehensive plan. "You can have trails, and there are trails on these properties, but typically you're not developing them when they're in the natural use district," Community Development Director Chris French told the commission at a work session last week. Staff also point to wetland and drainage problems: no on-site wetland survey has been done, but federal inventory maps show wetlands on both properties.

The borough has been here before. It reviewed the same two portions for disposal in 2019, and — according to a resident's comment in the meeting packet — the commission voted 4-0 to keep them. The staff report doesn't mention that history.

Fourteen people have written in opposing the sale. The commission meets at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Assembly Chambers, with written comments due that afternoon.