Fair mulls land sale

PALMER — The Alaska State Fair is weighing the possibility of selling 40 acres of land to a local industrial training school, but Valley farmers are concerned.

“We have an offer from NIT to purchase that land for a school, a pretty extensive school, it’s pretty impressive,” said fair general manager Ray Ritari.

NIT stands for Northern Industrial Training. The group is based in Palmer and currently runs a truck driving school, which they conduct in the fair’s parking lots.

Ritari said the deal, if it’s made, is a long ways off and has been ongoing since September.

“I haven’t even had a chance to talk to a real estate attorney to develop a contract,” he said. “We are a ways from it happening.”

The fair’s Board of Director’s meeting Thursday drew a standing-room-only crowd.

Most everyone who testified, with a few notable exceptions, opposed the plan.

Ben VanderWeele said he’d offered to buy the land himself to make it a part of VanderWeele Farms. Board president John Harkey told him to speak to Ritari who could then bring VanderWeele’s proposal to the board for consideration.

“I promise you that it will remain in agriculture forever,” VanderWeele said.

Arthur Keyes of the Glacier Valley Farm also spoke at the meeting. He said he’s not opposed to a training school, but doesn’t want it on the 40 acres of land that was one part of the Hamilton Farm.

“We live in a state that there’s lots of land but, comparatively, there’s very little farmland in Alaska,” Keyes said in an interview prior to the meeting.

And the type of land in question, what farmers refer to as Tier II land, is the best Alaska has to offer. It’s also very rare. The plot in question, he said, is currently a hay field. But that doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. To clear a similar plot from forested land and start farming, he said, would involve a process stretching out over multiple years.

Also at the meeting, board members heard from Todd Pettit, another farmer, who noted that Valley residents spend a lot of time digging up old plows to put in museums. But then they pave the farmland “and call it progress.”

Assemblywoman Michelle Church also came to speak. As an Assemblywoman she told the board about the Borough’s efforts to promote farmland preservation.

As an individual, she said, “I think you guys need to take a long-term vision,” and explore other options.

Ritari, in an interview, said that, from the fair’s perspective, there’s more than just a land sale here. They have plans to buy another parcel currently owned by Alaska Demolition. With this money, they could do that without going into debt.

More than that, though, having the school next to the fair will allow for the partnerships with NIT.

The students in the classes, he said, “will be used over here at the fairgrounds so we can keep our buildings in better maintenance conditions.”

Krista Gonder, Chief Financial Officer for NIT, agreed with Ritari about the partnership. It’s something, she said, that they already do.

“We just also helped build that mile of road up to the railroad depot there. That was our students that did that,” she said.

She said the facility plan calls for dormitories, wind turbines and a power generation facility. Students will fix and operate those things and also take classes in pipefitting, heavy equipment operation. All are skills they’ll need to work on projects like the natural gas pipeline and in the oil and gas sector. That would, in turn, allow companies to fill those jobs with in-state hires.

They’d do that now if they could, but, “the problem that we have right now is that we’re limited on space,” Gonder said. “We don’t have enough classrooms we don’t have enough shops and labs to teach.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.