Community and Economic Development Committee - September 4, 2025

No members.

Okay, good morning. I am Scott Meitner. I will go ahead and be chairing this meeting until Member Martinez gets here today. Today is Thursday, September 4th. It is 9:00 AM.

We're noticed from 9:00 till 10:30 this morning for the Community and Economic Development Committee of the Anchorage Assembly. Uh, I see member Baldwin Day is on the phone. Do we have any other members on the phone?

Okay, we'll go ahead and get rolling then. Um, regular reports: Planning, Development, Public Works, Building Services. Morning, Mr. Chair. Run through the departments quickly.

No, we have a representative from Planning here. There's— everybody's out of the office today. Lance? Oh, well, Lance probably does not have enough— he's out of town too. Lance, do you have anything from Planning?

I didn't get a chance to catch up with— do you want to leave? Uh, yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a couple things. Um, yeah, Planning, I think on the staffing level, just to let the committee know, They're fully staffed except for 2 senior planners.

Um, they've been working on some R-6 zoning updates for setback. And I think the last thing I want to mention is that we have a planning term services contract coming before the assembly. We had some changes to the document, and thanks to the help of legal and purchasing, you'll be seeing that. I don't see it on the agenda for next Tuesday, so we'll keep you, the committee, informed. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Okay, thank you, Lance. I see Member Brawley joined us on the phone.

Okay.

Mr. Chair, not to put her on the spot, but Elizabeth probably just walked in. Do you have any additional updates for the Planning Committee? Um, uh, for current planning, yeah, there are several meetings next week. So we have Planning and Zoning Commission, Urban Design Commission, and CBA.

Uh, I guess I'll just highlight that Planning and Zoning Commission on Monday, uh, to Zoom, is before TDC, the public hearing, is open. Um, there is a recommendation to postpone a decision on and I believe also continue the public hearing to October. And then, um, the Saber-Seward Highway, uh, it's approximately from the Robert Creek Flats area down to Bird. Um, that project at the 35% design phase, so it's the DSR, uh, design study report review, that is also before Planning and Zoning Commission Monday. So just a couple projects I think will get some attention.

Okay, thank you, and then next we'll turn it over to Greg Soule for Building Services. Thanks, Kent. Uh, to the chair, uh, start with some staffing updates. Um, Building Services just hired one new structural plan reviewer and onboarded him this week, and as well as, uh, on-site plan reviewers. Now we're fully staffed in on-site.

We're hiring one additional structural plan reviewer who should show up in December, which will make us fully staffed in plan review. Um, we're also bringing in another plumbing and mechanical inspector to bring that to full staffing. He starts, uh, next month. And also we're bringing in a seasonal stormwater inspector, uh, this month to backfill for some of the SWIP inspections and the final PE Civil inspections. We're still down one permit tech.

We've advertised for that position, and we're still down one PE Civil plan reviewer, but that— that's— I'm sorry, private development plan reviewer, and that position will be advertised at the first of the year. Um, construction valuation, we have seen a little bit of drop-off in permitting. Recently in the last month, but we still are on pace to hit about $600 million for the year. It looks like, so that'll put us basically where we were last year.

We've had some meetings on our nuisance abatement fund. Thanks to the infusion of $167,000 that was approved by the Assembly, we have now about $480,000 for demolition projects. And $150,000 we're reserving for, uh, land use enforcement cleanup projects, and that leaves about $50,000 contingency in there. So we are in the process of prioritizing, uh, which buildings we'll be tearing down and which cleanup we'll be doing. We have 2 demolitions, uh, scheduled in the near term, and those should be going out to bid shortly.

And there, there was a question, uh, from Member Brawley last month regarding third-party plan reviews, and she helpfully pointed out that we have a full report due in October. But I was to give you some preliminary numbers. We did a, a query on third-party plan reviews. We will have the full report on October 1st, and we'll also present it at this meeting next month. Um, but when it comes to commercial, commercial buildings, um, about 10% of them are now coming in for new buildings.

This is complete building, is a structural only. No one has yet taken us up on the plumbing, mechanical, electrical, or any of those reviews. But for structural, we have 10% of the new commercial buildings are coming in as third party, um, less than 1% of commercial alterations, and about 15% of commercial additions. For residential, um, new buildings, 62% of those come in as, uh, third-party plan review, and only 7% for alterations, and 6% for additions. So we'll have the full report with all the numbers for those, uh, next month, but that's some preliminary numbers for you guys for now.

And that's it for— from, uh, Building Services. Thank you, Greg. Touch on the Public Works Department quickly. In Maintenance and Operations, uh, couple big things going on.

They're currently out to bid for— or they're going out to bid for the treatment center of Alaska. That's the, the imagination of the Golden Lion. Uh, they're working on, uh, the predesign for the downtown library. And on the agenda for next week, you'll see a purchase of 12 police patrol vehicles, Durangos, uh, that's been moved along by Fleet and, and, uh fleet purchasing. So we're glad to keep adding to the APD fleet.

In PM&E, quite a bit going on. I won't touch all of them. Some big surfacing projects are pretty much done and open to the public again. 36Th Avenue and Old Sioux Highway, Lake Otis, and Dowling Road from Elmore to Lake Otis, those are both done. Some smaller projects, Jewel Terrace off of Diamond, which has been a long, longstanding desire of that neighborhood to bring it up to a little bit better standard.

Uh, Forest Park is done. There is a concern from a resident that we're working to address, but that project from Northern Lights to Hillcrest is done and has been well received by the community there. And 42nd Avenue, just across the street here, is underway. It's about 30% complete. Um, it's just a big, big project.

That's a 2-year project. And then probably the other big one in the PMD world I would mention is the West Anchorage snow site, which I think most members are familiar with. They've been.

Our replacement of the snow disposal sites at the Northwood Street maintenance station. Phase 2 of that is underway with the intent to finish building the gravel pad, and ideally— not ideally— we plan to have that facility available for use this winter. So that's a huge, huge benefit for street maintenance, really cuts down on their workload. And in traffic, they are finishing up the 14 miles of Maybury Greenways. That they've been working on this summer.

And the rest of it is, well, the 2024 annual traffic report is done and should be distributed soon to any interested parties. And Brad is glad to announce that they have finally filled a vacant traffic signals manager position that's been vacant for quite a while because of some acting assignments and shuffling around. But that's a— he's close to being fully staffed now. His manager position. So that's a big, big accomplishment for traffic.

And Mr. Chair, that's all I've got in the Public Works world. So any questions, I'll turn it over to Tiffany Briggs for real estate. Member, uh, Brawley has a question for you.

Yeah, um, hi, and I'll be on my way, uh, pretty soon to get there in person. Um, thanks, Ken. And I just wanted to— I guess two comments and a question. First to, uh, Greg, thanks for that report. I know that was the prior report.

On third party. I'm looking forward to that next month. And then to Kent, thank you again for Forest Park Drive. I've also heard a lot of great feedback from neighbors. I know that project took a long time to get off the ground, so people are very happy, and please pass that on to the staff as well.

Um, my question is, another part of town, uh, in my district, uh, is having a lot of issues with potholes on Spinard Road. Um, I know that we're actually— I think crews working yesterday in that area somewhere, but Just a lot of concern about kind of the cumulative impact of patching a bunch of potholes, and then it makes the road very bumpy and hard to drive on. And I think just this person raised the question, at what point are we just repaving? And this is the section of Spinard kind of south of Northwood before you get to the airport. So just curious on that particular piece, but just in general, at what point do we have to stop just doing pothole patches and do a full repave?

Thank you, Member Brawley. I, I think that's the area kind of near Gwenny's there, and I've been talking with Paul Van Laningham about that. I'm not sure we'll get to it this year, but we're considering exactly that, just a small pavement removal and replacement project to, to take care of that perpetual patching that is happening there. Is that the area you're speaking of? Yes, it is.

And I think just in general, kind of some frustration with, oh, we're always just patching and why don't we just redo the road? But I know that's more effort as well.

I will follow up on that one. I expect we'll be tackling that one soon. And your larger question is a point well taken. It's a matter of funding and workload often. But glad to talk more about that if there are other specific areas we could put on the list.

Sure. Yeah, I'll follow up offline. Thank you. Are there any other member questions or questions for Mr. Pulleys? We'll move on to Tiffany.

Good morning. A couple updates from HLB. Staff is working on 2 subdivision platting actions in Gerdwood. One is for the second phase of the Gerdwood Industrial Park that will take that next section of one bigger track and turn it into 6 tracks. And then, um, Orca Mountain View is a larger tract that will turn into 3 tracts with one having the potential for residential development.

There's some other analysis we need to do as far as utilities and whatnot to see if it's actually feasible, but breaking that parcel up. Both of those subdivision actions were listed in the 2025 Work Program. And we have started drafting the 2026 work program. So, okay, thank you. Any questions for Ms. Briggs?

Okay, Chair, I have a question. Yes, Member Baldwin-Day, go ahead. Thank you. Good morning, Ms. Briggs. I have a question about the project that was mentioned actually back when new members were being onboarded and we were doing like the speed dating with all of the different departments and getting a little briefing on, on each.

And during that meeting, there was mention of a project that was maybe 6 months from completion that was sort of cataloging what parcels or what Heritage Land Bank holdings were actually developable, and there was some sort of analysis or assessment going on. And I'm curious what the status is of that project.

Thank you, Member Bolden-Day. I will double-check on the status. I know we have been working with GDIC. They have the first draft completed, so we need to go through and kind of refine the data, but it's still being actively worked on. Fantastic.

Thank you.

Okay, any other questions? Then we will move on to Anchorage Community Development Authority. Thank you, sir. Mr. Chair, good morning, members of the assembly.

Uh, Chad Stovall standing in for Mike Robbins today. Mike, uh, regrets can't join us. He's going to meet mayor and our staff. I have 5 updates for you today. Um, starting out with our micro unit project.

Um, last week we reached terms with Eric Visser and Visser Construction. Our micro-unit project. So we have entered into a contract with him. The project has began. There's some site development going on, and we expect— we're doing weekly meetings with the contractor until our November 15th deadline to complete the project.

And then I believe also that the health department— kind of go out of our field there, but I believe their RFP for operations is coming out the next couple of weeks as well. On our third INGRA, Denali RV Resort project, we want to thank all the departments that were with us on our, you know, our initiation call here to start the project here and kind of lay out all the different parts here. But we will soon be drafting our RFP next couple of weeks for that, or excuse me, about the beginning of October we'll be drafting that and hope to have that out shortly after. We are working with industry partners and making sure that all the Pieces are getting lined up to, uh, to complete that project. We still have a goal to develop that by the spring of, uh, '26.

Uh, also, ACDA launched a new initiative here. We increased our rates for downtown on the parking just a little bit, and with some of that excess revenue, we are going to start a downtown reinvestment program, um, to reappropriate that money back into the downtown area. It's early yet, but we've got a lot of interest in that, good feedback from the folks we've talked to about that. On our Fireweed property, we are also starting a discussion for several multifamily housing development partners to come in to work with us. We hope to have an RFP on that.

The planning's getting done, and later this month it should be recorded and under ACDH's control. So we look forward to starting that project as well here this fall. Um, and then last here, um, just a quick update on the, uh, ARPA grants Beyond the Beige and the Facade program. We have, uh, excuse me, uh, checks that went out on Beyond the Beige, and then the Facade program has one loan that's gone to the bank here, but incremental progress on each of those. But even before then, Margaret, those were broke ranks, so Those are our updates for today.

Is there any questions from the assembly? Member Constant has a question. Yes. Yes, sir. Yeah, thank you.

A couple of weeks ago, I sent an email to Mike. I don't know where he's at right now, but I haven't heard back from him inquiring about the detail on the fees charged at the meters, because I've heard some concerns that the approved amounts are substantially different than the amounts that are getting charged. Um, and so I am trying to track down kind of the nature of the fees that are being associated with the meters downtown.

Sure, we can follow up with you on that and get you some details. Um, is it okay to reach out to your office? Yeah, no, that's fine. Again, I emailed Mike a few times over the last couple weeks, haven't heard back. So yeah, I just want to understand how much, what percentage the nature of the fees, what it's paying for, because it's certainly beyond the 4% charge for the swiping.

Thanks for bringing that to our attention. We'll get back with you involved on that this week. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Member Brawley has a question as well.

Go ahead, Anna. Yeah, thanks. This isn't time sensitive, but I was just curious to understand kind of what, basically what your portfolio of properties is or parcels. And I don't know if that exists already, but just because I know you guys have had some land acquisitions and everything, so I'm just kind of curious where that's at. But again, not time sensitive.

Thanks.

Thank you, Member Brawley. We can follow up with you as well and either have a discussion or send you some information about the ones that are currently under our control.

Hold, the ones that we are working on to bring deals and development to, and then maybe an update on our R&E property initiative, um, for reactivating those sites, um, with our partners, Brendan, and the Planning Department.

Yeah, that's—. Thanks, Anna. Is that something you could just bring to this committee meeting next month? Yes, sir. Perfect.

Yes, sir. Thank you. And actually, Chris's question as well, uh, if you could bring that to us next month as well. I mean, certainly you can give it to Chris ahead of time, but I think it'd be good information since he asked a question here to, uh, follow up on for everybody else to hear. Yes, sir, sure will, Mr. Chairman.

Any other questions?

For the record, Member Baldwin-Day has joined us in the room. Uh, let's see, unfinished business, I see we have nothing. So new business, we'll go to discussion AO 2025-96, pending for progress, and I am not sure who's taking the lead on this. I'm going to swap—. You might swap these, and I will text for the Martinez and see how far out he is.

Okay, discussion on Alaska Botanical Gardens expansion plan. Mike, I don't want to butcher your last name. Yeah, sure. Monterusso. Monterusso.

Thank you. Yeah, thank you.

Move up here to the front so I'm not talking at everybody's back of their heads. Perfect. Hopefully the folks online can hear me.

Thanks again for inviting me here. Actually, George Martinez did, when George and Anna Brawley took the time to come visit the garden, oh, a few meetings ago now, 5 days. And they were invited to come to this meeting, and so despite today being beer garden day at the garden, I think this is a pretty important group to talk to, so Made the time. I'll come back around to beer garden in just a minute, but I'm Mike Montarosso, the Executive Director of Alaska Botanical Garden. I've been at the garden 13, 14 years now, a little over half of which as the director.

Prior to that, I worked at 2 or 3 other botanical gardens around the country, and I visited many of them, quite familiar with the formats and how they work and what doesn't work at a botanical garden, what they are and what they aren't. So, A lot of my career is in this. So I don't want to assume that anyone here knows anything about the Botanical Garden, but if you are a member and you've been there, thank you. I know Member Brawley is, so appreciate that. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

We opened in 1993 on East Anchorage, 80 acres, actually a little more than 80 acres of Heritage Land Bank land, which I'm topic. It's on your agenda today, uh, and we are in a 55-year lease with the municipality, uh, quite a bit of time left on that, ends in 2058. Uh, if you are not familiar, we are adjacent to the Betty Benson School in East Baker, and we have a really nice partnership, uh, with Betty Benson. Their operations really complement what we do as far as seasonality, uh, day-night kind of stuff. So in the parking lot, which I'll point out here shortly, is not sufficient for our activities in recent years, but it does work as a shared site.

Oh, thank you. Are you good? Yeah, thank you. Thanks for posting. And so there's a lot of slides here.

I will stay true to your speedy format here and try to move things along, but also do want to get the point across with what we are and what we're trying to do out there. We have, what, a dozen or so board members currently. Next slide.

And about the same number of staff. So again, if you're not familiar with the garden, we do have year-round full-time staff, up to 20 people in the summer between education and guest services, horticulture and all the things, marketing. But we are very much a year-round operation.

What I did was I took our annual review from last year and expanded it to kind of address the topic at hand of this information. A lot of it is in the annual review, which is on the website. We are over a million-dollar operation in revenue, 80% of which is earned, which is, for the record, quite high. We do a lot of programs and we bring in a lot of revenue that we have to, or this is sustain ourselves, most of which is now gate receipts. Visitation has increased significantly in the last few years because we are a year-round operation, but everything else is split pretty equally.

We get a very good consistent community support through memberships and donations. Our education program, which I don't think a lot of people are familiar with— I'll highlight that in a moment— is a significant part of our revenues, of course. And then events, rentals a little bit, retail sales, charitable gaming, if you're familiar with that system, is part of the pie.

Then for expenses, similar.

What, a little over half, 57% payroll, actually I think a little low as far as nonprofits. Professional services, next chunk.

Contractors doing stuff, a lot of that's grant-related activity, and then everything else.

We have a Horticulture Department, of course, that's what we do. Lots of different themes there. I point out the star with the National Mechanopsis Collection. We do have a nationally recognized and nationally registered plant collection specifically for the blue poppies, if you're familiar with those. Guided Gardening is another one I would point out.

Second.

Events and themes, holiday lights. Hopefully some of you have been to our winter program, runs from Thanksgiving until the end of February. But we do amateur ice sculptures. Mother's Day is kind of an evolving program for us. You'll see that in a second.

All summer is plant sales. We do wine, we do beer, which again is today. Botanical starts in a week. Fossil, we do private events. This is not everything, but some of our big programs.

Education, again, something I think a lot of people don't know the breadth of what we do. We have summer camp, which sells out pretty quickly. So, you know, I think Anna participates in that and some of the others here perhaps are online. So you kind of have to be ready when those slots open up. So there's a lot of demand for camp, but we are maxed out capacity.

So we are active in the schools. Uh, and the schools come to us for programs. I'm gonna therapy and then—. Sorry, how many students you taking? So yeah, we'll get to that in a second.

It's 150. Oh wow, it's, uh, is the answer to that question. I'll show you some images. Yep, there it is, 150 kids for summer camp. Uh, there are 7 or 8 different teams that they run throughout the summer for summer camp.

I don't even know what that picture was at first, but oatmeal, it's a lot of oatmeal. But yeah, they do cooking and nutrition, ecology, insectology, entomology, all sorts of different things that the kids learn through the summer. Or camp.

Or camp. A mud and fossil day, if the weather's good, that's a sellout program, well, sellout, maxed out program for our facilities.

Horticultural therapy is a fairly new one. We work with folks with particular challenges, come to the garden, and that's a very much a hands-on program.

Guided gardening, which I mentioned briefly, is 41 families that get a weekly share. That's winding down for the season right now. So we grow all that stuff, and the folks that sign up, families that sign up, come and get their share. The addition to that, which separates that from something like Arc Harvest or Full Circle, that they get plants to grow at home. So it's a guide, what we call a guided program.

So they get some plants to grow at home and we give them instructions and we are a resource ongoing from summer. So it's not just, and some do come get their vegetables, but others we try to engage a little bit deeper than that.

Yeah, sure.

We— what I would call sold out. We at 40, 41, 42 families is really pushing it for us. So, uh, we announced this in February, so that's the time to watch social media and our newsletter. Um, you can sign up for those things on our website. I don't want to get too far into CSA.

It may be changing next year too, so I don't want to commit to anything right now. Workshops every month throughout the year. Ice sculpting, yoga, wreath making, all sorts of stuff. Those typically sell out too. Art classes as well.

Wine in the Woods is done for the year. Next year it'll be in July, so watch out for that. Beer Garden. Beer in the Garden, as we call it. Is today, September 4th.

Still tickets available. We try to cram 600 people into the garden. It's our biggest event of the year, and there are some spots available. I will say that if you want to see an overflowing parking lot and the limit of our facilities, come tonight. Just drive through the.

Hot. You'll see it, what I'm talking about. And anyone in this room or online that wants to walk through, you're welcome to be my guest. I will be there at least for the first half of the event. I've done so many of these things I let staff clean up, uh, but, uh, uh, you're welcome to come walk through, or at least drive through, and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Mother's Day, uh, when the weather's good, we fill it up again. Uh, that's this early season thing. It's really exciting. It to see people come out in May in Alaska. That's kind of coming from the lower 48, Michigan, it's been hard to adapt a botanical garden year-round format to early spring.

I just haven't figured it out, but Mother's Day is just, it's going kind of nuts for us, and that's great in the second week of May. Which brings me to parking. This particular year, you don't know what you're looking at here, but the parking lot is full. People are looking for spots. That Picture on the left is behind the school.

They'll start getting creative with where to put their cars. That's a fire lane. We try to avoid that if at all possible, but we are out of space for parking for any of these events, and interesting things start to happen. There's no overflow option.

Botanical starts in about a week. That's a fun, scary fun, fun scary kind of thing that families are really looking forward to. We start getting questions around the only summer my Wings Botanical started. So, come on out to the garden and see some of that into the fall. We really, I would really like to expand this too.

There's a lot of potential for fall programming.

Ice sculptures, amateur ice sculptures, we do workshops there. Some of this stuff is so cool, it's kind of semi-professional in the level of quality that we're seeing. Unfortunately, the Chinooks come through and kind of wipe it out. They wiped it out twice. This past year, which is frustrating, but there's— people love to come to the garden day and night, which is another hard time to get people to come out after the first of the year when school is returning that second week of January, first week of January.

These would still be available into February if the weather cooperates. Winter Lights, again, hopefully some of you have been through. And we get some folks that have only been in winter, which I find— you gotta come in summer. But this is a 5-year-old program, and during the AST break time, especially again, the parking lot fills up. More lights.

More lights. Bike. Yep, I put the bike one in there. It didn't hold up. We'll have to do a version 2 this year.

The ice sculptures are fantastic. Volunteers come out year-round to help us. That's great to see.

More volunteers.

Donors, just from last year. It scans all the website. Go quick through the next couple of slides. Grateful to those folks and businesses.

Okay. So. The point of engaging with the municipality at this time, the reason we invited initially George and anyone, and Anna, anyone that wants to come, please come out and walk through. We are maxed out in our facilities. They are not designed for year-round operations.

There are overcrowded staff space. Even to this group, this municipality, I do not hesitate to say we are pushing and exceeding the occupancy per codes. Uh, we did have no fire suppression on site. The closest hydrants are at Benny Benson, about 1,000 feet away. Uh, those would have to be brought over.

Uh, we use a lot of temporary structures, tents and shelters, and, uh, we talked already about parking lot situation, no overflow option. Uh, beer garden will sell out. You'll— if you happen to come by, uh, we're just to tell you that we run a shuttle to AHFC building, which is Boniface and Tudor. They run 2 shuttles back and forth to the garden from, from that lot, which is behind the building, if you are familiar.

So we've been kicking around expansion plans for quite some time, even going back to like 2010, 2011, when they were experiencing some of these things. But now we're year-round, we're 3 times the size that we were in 2010. And, uh, we started the process, uh, last year with, uh, Agnivac to do a feasibility study, which is referenced in that handout that most of you have. I have— there's more copies over there along with my card if you have questions about that. But they conducted a feasibility study for our options, what would it take, and the results of which demonstrated that ABG can operate an expansion of any size, essentially.

We've got it kind of narrowed down to 2: an education center, which would allow us to do more of those education programs on site. We have no year-round facility that will accommodate education programs. If you're familiar with the garden, we have one building, which is a greenhouse, not intended for programs, not coded for that kind of thing. And so, yes, $10 million is a lot of money, but we The infrastructure, this has been going on for a long time, parking utilities, just to kind of bring us up to speed. And yes, an education center would be a number 1 priority.

And then there's a full version for the whole visitor center, which would maximize rentals. Weddings, we get 2, 3 inquiries a week in the summer, especially, which we can't accommodate. And we have a unique situation. Yes, you can do rentals or else elsewhere around town. But we have a unique opportunity, unique site for a unique experience with the gardens surrounding these potential facilities to offer for rentals for weddings, receptions, meetings, that kind of thing.

So there's a full plan that would include that.

Uh, we already talked about these things— parking and fire suppression. A children's garden is part of this. And I'm sort of imagining or hoping some of you maybe have visited a children's garden in other cities where you've been, or you might be familiar with what is a children's garden. I've got some very basic concepts here. None of this, none of this is ready to launch as far as a campaign.

We are in the pre, sort of pre-pre-development stage, I guess you could say, of evaluating our facilities, evaluating our resources and our options. Again, started with that feasibility study, but very much hinges on and includes a children's garden, which, uh, the likes of which I don't think most people have seen. There is one in Alaska. I've seen them. We've got a couple of examples that are coming up here in a minute, but that's a 7,000-square-foot education center with that that would be limited programs and rentals in size.

The full education center is 12,000 square feet, and if we were to build a children's garden without the infrastructure, it would just blow us up. I've seen what they do to organizations. There's no way. Yeah, here's the full plan. Same thing, but a bigger building for those, uh, for those rentals and revenue associated with the— with that full programs.

Get to that second too. Go ahead. So, uh, again, just thinking about what are the options, how is this, is this possible? If so, how? Uh, start talking to different groups, uh, like you all, as well as corporate sources, foundations, and private businesses and individuals.

Uh, we approached the, the topic or the subject of a municipal bond at some point. State and federal, perhaps. All the things are being considered and looked at and explored.

So a couple of— I don't want to call them teasers, but examples, case studies, if you will, of similar projects that have happened in areas that I consider to have similar demographics, perhaps, to Anchorage. So Green Bay Children's Garden is a $13 million project. I believe it was mostly private sources of funding for that, but in a population of 329,000. So yeah, I could pull out examples of big city, you know, really big city botanical gardens with, you know, these elaborate children's gardens, but I think it's more realistic and appropriate to give you examples of gardens that are in similar areas.

And then the other one where I was here recently this season in June, traveling to Denver, and you take a couple-hour drive north to Cheyenne where they have a $16 million children's garden and facility there in a population of 100,000 that what appears to be funded from what they call the Sixth Penny or one of these tax structure programs that we're all familiar with.

So, again, we mentioned, or I mentioned, that we're in the early stages of that children's garden design specifically, because that is the focal point or the key to our expansion effort. So, we've got some work already happening to plan that feature. Along with it, of course, the needed infrastructure to support our expansion.

So specifically, uh, what are we talking about here?

I hope that most of you are familiar with our location, but as you can see, Tudor and Campbell Airstrip, got the fire station there on the left, Betty Benson School, which as you drive into the parking lot, maybe 10% of the people that arrive think that we're the school and vice versa. And at times they put a sign on their front door that says the botanical garden is actually to the south on the other side of the parking lot. And so folks make their way, and the garden is indicated at the bottom of the screen there. So, relatively small parking lot that holds 125 people or 125 cars legally by code, which is, you know, 250-ish people, 2 people per car. So that's really what you're looking at as far as available parking.

That overflow lot, if you want to call it that, that I mentioned, Tudor and Boniface is off the back here. Requires a shuttle, and people could walk from— what is it— Chugach Square, Kaladi, over there at Patterson. That's not realistic, I don't think. You have to cross Tudor, which is frankly scary, especially on that downhill section on Tudor. So that's the site as it is.

Go to the next slide. The plan, the concepts would be in red, uh, double or triple that parking lot, just go straight east. We are in communication with ASD currently to, uh, go through the steps to see what that would take to get to access to that as part of that lease that I mentioned, uh, straight east. Then there would be the water service, fire service coming from Benny Benson, uh, property. Uh, I think at that point we would be looking at a new entry.

That children's garden is included and that education center included. So this plan here, as you see it, uh, yes, going to be $10 million-ish. Um, and then we do have partners if you're curious, uh, you know, what industry partners or program partners there might be. BERTLC is one. Uh, we are actively working with BERTLC to pursue this plan, uh, as a site partner because they also need a facility for their education programs.

As you might know, they exist on Old Seward down there by Potter Marsh, and they, they have no realistic option for what they need as far as an education facility. They can do rehab down there, but their education facilities are lacking, so it's a natural fit. We work with BirdTSC all the time with programs. Children's Museum, we work with them too. They don't have a facility unless you count the but essentially is a utility closet in the mall over there on, what is it, by Home Depot.

What's that mall called? They have a storage space in there and that's about it. And Cooperative Extension, a university department technically, and we work with them pretty regularly too and others as well, but those are the program partners that we work with mostly. So that's the plan, the concept. What was next?

I don't know what I have here. Oh, sure. Well, Project Anchorage, we're all familiar with. I thought it was interesting that one of those projects, it's called a Four Seasons Trailside Facility. I call it the Chalet East because the feasibility study suggests that we— this is exactly the kind of thing that we were trying to build here, and we can operate it.

According to the feasibility study.

And I'd like to take things even a step further in these concepts. Why not think big? Because if you had a chalet on the east side, that would be a natural, what, complement to the Kincaid Chalet, and you can ride a bike from one to the other without being on the road system. As a cyclist, I think this is kind of fun to think about. Half-moose Apu-Sluup.

That might be it. Yeah, so any questions on any of that? That's an awful lot of information, but stuff that we deal with, think about pretty much daily. That was really great information. Uh, Member Brawley has a question.

Yeah, um, yeah, thanks. And well, partly just a report. So we talked about during our meeting looking into whether and how the Muni could bond for any of this, knowing that it's any land, but it's private, it's basically private assets, right? So as I'm chasing down that question, but just to say it here on the record as well, I think it's an interesting thing to think about as well as, you know, you kind of rose, you provided some other kind of avenues that we've talked about in terms of revenue and stuff. But also, I'm curious, so do you have a formal relationship with the school district?

Like, is there an MOU or, and/or Have they ever expressed a need to expand that parking for their operation? Well, we have an MOU for the parking, but no MOU for programs per se. But we're in the schools twice a week, which is not the question, I understand. But that is one thing I think people don't know about ABG is that we are active with ASD, not quite daily, but certainly weekly in the schools. Again, they come to us for schools.

To answer the question about parking specifically, Typically, when we approach them, they're like, chunk of woods, sure, have at it. They have no plans, or not necessarily any need for that. But they could use it, obviously, and that MOU that exists for parking continues. It's a pretty good fit. Okay, and just one quick observation too.

It's interesting, you know, we talk a lot about in the context of housing, you know, where are we going to put the parking, the infrastructure costs, water lines, you know, fire issues. And so, it's, This is a good problem to have that you have so many, so much interest in so many programs that you can't sustain all of it with what you have there. But anyway, it's another kind of lens of all of our infrastructure issues that Victor's sharing. Yeah, I appreciate that word sustain. I think about it as a director, person responsible for the site and the organization.

I think about occupancy codes, sustainability of using things in the ways that they weren't intended. For it. Uh, so it's not a great feeling, so put pressure on myself to do something about it. And in some version of this, if we were to, uh, adhere to codes, we would have to go backwards, honestly.

Uh, Member Constant.

Thanks. You know, just since, uh, Member Brawley mentioned bonds, I want us to be very cautious and clear that there's high competition and limited resources available across the municipality for all manner of critical infrastructure projects. And so I don't want to communicate any false sense of opportunity here, and it's possible that there is something in the hopper when there's a clear, thoughtful proposal for something specific. But I want to be the voice of caution that the demands are high. And the means are low.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, appreciate that too. We talk about that as well at the board level and throughout the organization, that there's a lot going on in the municipality. We, you know, we get it. This is a multi-year concept, a plan, so we're not saying that any of this should happen or could happen immediately, but we appreciate the, uh, the situation.

And I think, uh, from my perspective and kind of pushing a little bit that, you know, there's a lot of need to address issues in the municipality, one of which is retaining people, retaining families, giving families a reason to stay in Anchorage. Some of that is the target or the theme of Project Anchorage was out of Oklahoma City. I believe that they were struggling to keep people in the city. This kind of thing will keep people, the children's garden and all the things that we do would fall in that category. So, yeah, I appreciate that and we understand.

Are you finished, Ms. Fawcett?

Okay, Member Baldwin-Davis. Thank you. Well, first, I want to thank you for this presentation. When I was homeschooling my kiddos, we actually were at the Botanical Garden quite frequently. It was like a sort of a classroom away from the classroom for us.

It's such an incredible space. So, I appreciate your stewardship. Over these years. I think my question sort of piggybacks on something you said a moment ago. And, you know, is there a phased development approach?

I mean, is this something that you contemplated in steps? And if so, what do those steps look like? And how does the funding stack evolve as you move through? Yeah, sure. Well, in one sense, this is the phased approach.

$10 Million, and things are not cheap. We understand that too. You know, we would like to have that. In fact, there's a there's a $19-20 million version when you start adding facilities for bird TLC or children's museum to come and do stuff. Uh, it's even bigger.

Construction is expensive, uh, and $10 million is, you know, scary, sure, um, but that is actually a scaled-down version. And then we could do parking, uh, we could do a children's garden, but our facilities will not support the kind of activity that would result from that. I am not in favor of just building more gardens without the needed infrastructure. So at the very least, we need that fire suppression so that we don't, aren't putting up tents and getting seasonal permits for weird things. So, you know, even that, you probably $5 million, you know, just for that.

Get you into something that would allow you to proceed. Kind of these $5 million increments, it feels like. $10 Million education center, children's garden itself is a million or so, believe it or not. Um, and then real facilities, yeah, $15, $16, $18 million. I think, yeah, I think that, that would be of interest to me to understand, you know, what is the, what is the price tag for parking and fire suppression?

Those seen like really like the most important first infrastructure. So yeah, I'd be really curious to see what that little package looks like. Yep, we, uh, we have a facilities committee that is looking at that. We just got a response from ASD on the process to have access to that extended parking square in the middle rectangle, I guess. Uh, you know, surveys and whatnot.

I would say probably looking at for fire suppression and parking, um, all the design work, uh, civil and whatnot, probably, you know, $3 million, $2.5-3 million, something like that. If you want to, you know, a functional parking lot that's to code, yeah, sure, I can see that. Yeah, and with those, once you have park numbers available, I'd be really interested to know Thank you. Sure. Yeah, just thinking about what's, you know, ways that the municipality can be supportive, you know, versus what, um, what private funds would need to do.

That's an interesting question. Thanks. Thanks.

Okay, any other questions? Mike, thank you very much for the presentation. I found it very interesting as well, so we appreciate your time going over that. Yeah, thank you all.

Okay, so Mr. Member Martinez is not going to make it in today, so we're going to punt his Spending for Progress to next month's meeting so he can go over that with everybody. Committee legislative budget priorities, annual list on page 2. Anna, who are you on this one? You want to go through this, or should we move this too?

I, well, I can't comment on all of these, but I will say in terms of the budget process, I guess I'll just use this opportunity to say we have a resolution on the agenda that was running through the finance— the Budget and Finance Committee, but will be up for the body's consideration on Tuesday. Amendments are certainly welcome. So it's out there. I don't—. We don't have an S version or anything.

So what you see is what's there. The one thing I'll mention is we'll put an amendment that says that basically has some more information about the 120-day memo since we submitted it before that had gotten published. But all of that to say, I would say for this committee just to consider, I know there's a long list of kind of policy issues and things like that, but if there are budget items, either looking at additional funding or just kind of honing in like the vacant and abandoned abatement fund that was discussed, just to highlight those there. And if there's any high-level things to put in that resolution, then consider that. Okay, perfect.

Then we will move on to audience participation.

Questions? Mr. Reeds. Oh, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to mention that the Planning for Progress ordinance is, uh, set for public hearing Tuesday the 9th, uh, line 14E. And so I'd love to talk to this— plans— plans to present to your committee next month or what, but that's why this meeting's coming up.

I'm sure that will be his plan, yeah, to continue it since he was unable to attend the meeting today.

Thank you. Okay, any other members of the audience with questions? Members of the body? Then we will be done early. All right, adjourned.