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Aaron Selbig/Turnagain Times Van Le Crockett (second from right) gives instructions to the Girdwood Community Advisory Committee at their June 24 meeting to come up with names for local neighborhoods. |
By Aaron Selbig
Turnagain Times
Did you know that Girdwood has a neighborhood called “Sunnyside”? Or how about the post-apocalyptic sounding “Lower Matrix”?
Those were just a couple of the creative names for local neighborhoods thought up by members of Girdwood’s Community Advisory Committee, an 11-member group that works closely with the Municipal Planning Department, at their June 24 meeting at the Girdwood Community Center.
The committee’s primary focus is on a comprehensive rewrite of the Girdwood Area Plan (GAP), a 122-page document adopted by the Anchorage Assembly in 1995 that acts as a blueprint for development in the area. The committee hopes that applying names to the neighborhoods will ease the plan along.
“If we divide Girdwood up into subareas, it will be easier to talk about those areas in the plan,” said city planner Van Le Crockett as she laid out a large map of the Girdwood area on a table and passed colored markers out to the group.
At first, committee members seemed hesitant to mark up the map, but then Tom Yeager grabbed a blue marker and dove right in. Yeager said that he thought the upper Crow Creek Valley should be labeled as such.
“I’ve always considered the whole northern portion of the valley as one generalized area,” he told his colleagues as he drew a bold blue line on the map, “and I would really like to see that area be as untouched as possible.”
Thus, the “Upper Valley” was born. Four Corners, the Lower Matrix, Virgin Creek, Alyeska Basin and Sunnyside (named because the neighborhoods west of the Alyeska Highway tend to get good sunlight) soon followed.
Yeager refers to the 1995 Girdwood Area Plan as “the Girdwood Bible.”
“At the time it was adopted by the Assembly,” he said, “it had a level of authority that was really respected and people went to the GAP when they wanted to do something.
The Community Action Committee and city planners Crockett and Thede Tobish are rewriting the GAP, not because its a flawed plan, they said, but because it needs to be updated to reflect changes in the Girdwood community, and it needs to include more specifics.
“It’s a beautifully written narrative, but there aren’t a lot of policies that planners can put into development projects,” said Crockett. “It’s more subject to interpretation.”
Their goals include updating data on the demographics of Girdwood, outlining strategies for land development, protecting natural resources and environmental features, and inserting a new chapter devoted solely to area trails. They also hope to use new information from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game about fish populations in local streams, along with new aerial maps of the entire Girdwood area, in their efforts.
“What we want this to be is usable,” said Tobish, “so it’s going to be very graphic-oriented.”
The Girdwood community will get their first look at the committee’s efforts in October, when the group plans to unveil the GAP rewrite at the Girdwood Community Center. No hard date has yet been set for that community event, but at the June 24 meeting, several ideas were proposed to make it a success. Free food and refreshments are likely to be a part of it, and committee members agreed that every effort must be made to make sure that everyone in Girdwood knows that they are invited to attend. The committee’s goal is to get as much public input on the plan before it is finalized and sent to the Girdwood Board of Supervisors and the Anchorage Assembly for approval.
“To me it’s more than just a land use study,” said Yeager. “I think community attitudes and aspirations are integral to the plan. What I’m hoping for is that the GAP regains the authority that it had in 1995.”