By Ken Smith
Turnagain Times
It’s been over 20 years since the last Turnagain Arm ComprehensivePlan was publishedin 1987. The plan is now being revised as the Turnagain Arm Area Plan identifying allowable uses of land in a 3,600- acre area in the communities of Rainbow, Indian, Bird Creek, and Portage/Twenty Mile River Area. Residents of these communities were offered a chance to testify and share their views with members of the Anchorage Planning and Zoning Commission on Thursday, Feb. 12 at the Indian Bible Chalet. Commissioner Chair Toni Jones told the audience at the start of the meeting that “Tonight is an information gathering jury.” The small room was fi lled with land owners and homeowners in the area who spoke for about two hours to members of the Anchorage Planning and Zoning Commission. The thick Planning booklet was complete with aerial maps of all the residential communities, and covered everything from recreation, to commercial and residential development on public and private lands. Unlike the 1987 Plan, the 2009 Plan does not include Girdwood because a separate plan was adopted in 1995, the Girdwood Area Plan. Inside the 2009 Turnagain Arm Area Plan, statistics were used from U.S. Census data from 2000.The Census data reports that Rainbow, Indian, Bird and Portage had a very small population of only 297 people with the largest population in Bird Creek with 134 people.
Within these communities rural designation is being applied despite their close proximity to Anchorage. In the 2009 Plan, “rural residential development” is the commonly applied term. For some in attendance how to defi ne the communities and subsequent development was an important consideration. “We would like to go to a minimal safety standard,” said one resident of Portage. “Rather than rustic standards.” She also expressed concern over the lack of regulation of the Alaska Railroad in the Portage area and wanted something to be done about the drainage issues facing the area, which, she said is much needed. John Bridges, a private landowner in Portage Valley, is looking to use his 60-acre parcel of land for agriculture; he was concerned new rezoning in the Plan would deter him from fulfi lling his retirement dream of developing his land for that purpose. “With the new zoning, will that be taken away from me?” he asked the Commissioners. “It’s an agricultural homestead. Is this new zoning going to affect me? I don’t want to build a sub-division, I don’t want any tourists.” One Commissioner answered that it would not change, but Thede Tobish, Senior Planner for the Municipality told him, “I personally can’t tell that there won’t be a change.” He stated further that the Plan is intentionally broad to be used as a recommendation concerning issues of land development in the Turnagain Arm area. The 1987 Plan did not include Portage, and as is stated in the 2009 Plan, “…the only development suitability analysis conducted for Portage in this Plan was a review of the basic suitability of the existing vacant parcels with the use of limited existing data. There appears to be enough developable vacant land to accommodate projected future growth in Portage.”
Portage is made up of private land owners, Alaska Railroad land, and Chugach National Forest land. Zoning changes in the new Plan recommend for future development of residential land to be a minimum of 2.5 acres for Indian and Bird and a 5-acre lot minimum for Portage/Twenty Mile River. It is expected that 75 new housing units can be built in the Turnagain Arm based on the current zoning and minimum lot-size standards. “I represent one of fi ve owners with 50 acres or more,” said Bridges. “None of us want to change the zoning. So, where did that idea come from? What is the driving force behind the rezoning?” Tobish explained that there was no land use designation for the Portage area. “People live on some of the properties, so we had to give a land use designation if it’s to be developed in the future,” he said. “We like it the way it is,” replied Bridges. “We’re the swampers, and we’re all lumped in together.”
David Blackburn lives in the Twenty Mile area and he questioned limiting one dwelling to a 5-acre parcel. “I don’t think it’s fair that the designation and rezoning is for a single-family parcel,” he said. “I am speaking for my neighbors that they don’t want to be designated one dwelling parcel. We all have fi ve acres or more, and we’d like to be able to build two dwellings on 5-acres.” As for growth on Turnagain Arm, the Plan states that the “Turnagain Arm population is not projected to grow signifi - cantly in the next 20 years, the small growth will require new residential development. It is projected that 75 new housing units can be built in Turnagain Arm based on current zoning and minimum lot-size standards to accommodate additional residents.” The one area that is not open to development is Rainbow, which “is essentially fully developed, with residential densities of approximately 5 or more acres per dwelling unit. Because of steep terrain and the community’s border with Chugach State Park, little additional area is available for any new residential development,” the Plan stated. Like in Girdwood, the Heritage Land Bank and Municipality of Anchorage is the largest private landowner on Turnagain Arm. Some HLB land is being managed by the state, and the Plan states that “The issue of municipal-selected lands will provide future land use challenges and decisions.”
These parcels consist of a 91-acre forested parcel on the east side of Indian Valley and a 155-acre parcel in southeast Bird Creek. HLB is still in the process of mapping of the environmental features of these parcels to determine the most appropriate land use designation. HLB has title to a cluster of small lots in Indian and fi ve lots in Bird Creek, four of which are intended for a neighborhood park, and a 10-acre parcel called Bird Creek Community Park under Municipality Parks Management. Also in Bird, is the Bird Creek Regional Park, which is in the back of the valley behind a residential subdivision. It’s about 2,265 acres and the patent came to the Borough around 1973. It is managed by the Dept. Of Natural Resources and State Parks and is a dedicated municipal park. The Plan next goes to the Planning and Zoning Commission for recommendations and fi nal adoption then to the Anchorage Assembly for approval, expected in late spring.