Kodiak's manager wants to sell lakeside land. Its planners say keep it.

Kodiak Island Borough's own manager has applied to sell borough land near Beaver Lake, and the borough's planning staff are recommending against it.

The two parcels sit between Beaver Lake and Selief Lane and total about 55 acres, though only unspecified portions of each would be sold. The planning commission takes up the case Sept. 16.

Staff walked the ground and found it too wet to build on. The area between the lake and Selief Lane is "very wet," their report says, and a federal inventory flags wetlands on both parcels, none of it formally surveyed. Combined with an earlier development study, staff concluded building there is impractical and recommended the borough keep the land, while acknowledging the housing need and calling the final choice a policy decision for the commission and the Assembly.

The land is zoned for natural use, a category the borough created in 1989 to protect habitat, water quality and trails, and which bars most construction. Housing isn't allowed on it. The zoning was applied in 1997 specifically to preserve the wetlands and open space, and carried forward in the 2008 comprehensive plan.

The housing pressure is real. A borough estimate puts the need at 492 new units over five years, and more than a third of Kodiak homes cost their owners more than they can comfortably afford. The City of Kodiak told staff that water and sewer lines nearby could serve homes if the land were developed.

No buyer prompted the sale. A borough lands committee twice recommended putting the parcels out for proposals last year, and the manager then filed the application. Every comment in the case file that takes a position opposes it.

One neighbor wrote that Beaver Lake "is the last lake that allows access for the entire community without the lakefront being surrounded by privately owned lots," and attached more than 300 pages of the borough's own planning and environmental record. Another said she knows how badly Kodiak needs housing "but this is not an area that should be converted from Natural Use to Residential." One commenter said the commission rejected a nearly identical sale for the same area in 2019, by a 4-0 vote, which Alaska News has not independently confirmed.