Access debate shines light on process

WASILLA — A roundabout debate over a short stretch of state-owned road has some small business owners and city council members questioning city processes they say border on being covert and deliberately deceptive.

Owners of a small business say Wasilla Mayor Dianne M. Keller and city staff seem to be working as agents for a local retail developer against established businesses, a suspicion at least one council member shares. A letter from the mayor threatening aggressive action against neighboring landowners if they didn’t sell to the developer and an e-mail from the development company prompting the city to send correspondence on its behalf has newly seated council member Dianne Woodruff asking questions.

“It is inappropriate for the developer to be telling the city what type of letters to be sending to the business owners,” she said. “The city shouldn’t be involved in pushing [anyone’s] agenda except the city’s.”

The e-mails, especially one dated Aug. 14 that asks the city to send a letter to uncooperative business owners, are “very disturbing,” Woodruff said. “They really state the intent and depth of the relationship between the developer and the city.”

Creekside, a conceptual development that would include more than 400,000 square feet of retail space off the Parks Highway between Sportsman’s Warehouse and the Windbreak Café, doesn’t have a direct access to the highway. Creekside’s preferred plan was to create an access that ran through the Windbreak’s property and nearby Six Robblees’. After being turned down by the business owners to sell, public documents show Creekside developer Meritage found an ally in the city.

Creekside’s next option is to access the Parks Highway directly, but state-owned Sun Mountain Avenue runs between the proposed retail complex and the highway. That’s when the city approached the state Department of Transportation about swapping the stretch of road in front of Creekside for another parcel of city land, Woodruff said.

A message left at Meritage Corp. was not returned. Earlier efforts to gather comment from the company on this subject have also been ignored.

Woodruff and the rest of city council debated the proposed land swap and city actions during a marathon five-hour meeting this past week. At issue is how the city got to the point of threatening to take land from an established business, seeming to work on behalf of a developer, she said.

“The council has basically said we need to not go through with this [road swap],” Woodruff said. “I’m hopeful we can pass a resolution that will say something to the effect that, until it really is a safety issue in the eyes of the Department of Transportation or 100 percent of the property owners are OK with it, it doesn’t happen.

“I wish we could have independent council look at this and see why the city is pushing for this so hard. … Why would they do so in such a way that would let the developer dictate what types of letters we’re sending out to property owners?”

Although Keller defends the right of Woodruff and business owners to speak their minds about the city’s motives, the mayor said the controversy can mostly be attributed to people misunderstanding the process the city needs to go through with development. Neither she nor city staff is working for the specific benefit of any developer, she said. In the case of Sun Mountain Road, a swap is prudent because growth and traffic projections show that stretch of road is a future safety hazard.

“It’s a lack of understanding of the process,” she said, adding that if the council doesn’t like the process that’s in place the council can change it. Until then, she and staff are bound to follow it.

“The traffic impact that development is expected to generate would be unsafe [for the current configuration],” Keller said. “Once that development is built out, we will have a problem. … It would be very short-sighted for us to ignore.”

There isn’t a traffic safety issue there now, Woodruff said. If the proposed development is what is expected to cause the safety problem, it should be the developer’s responsibility to alleviate. Also, she said there have been no studies or other data to support a concern for safety.

“If there is a safety issue, call engineers out, run it by the public and say, ‘Here are the solutions,’ then afterwards contact the property owners [that could be affected],” Woodruff suggested.

Annette and Bob Andres have owned the Windbreak Café for 27 years. Located on the north side of the Parks Highway and south of Sportsman’s Warehouse just off Sun Mountain Avenue, it’s the closest to the proposed Creekside complex. Although relieved it’s now unlikely her land will be taken for an access route, Annette Andres said she is disappointed it wasn’t until the public became aware of the situation that the city backed off.

“If we hadn’t have gotten up in arms I don’t think we would’ve been dealt with fairly,” she said, adding the city’s ethics in dealing with the community have been compromised. “I know what’s ethical and what’s not. … That they wanted to put a road through our property was part of a much larger scheme that the mayor was participating in. We’re not done.

“We are vigorously defending our property, and part of vigorously defending our property is vigorously defending the access we have enjoyed and depended on over the years,” Andres added.

Keller maintains she and staff have been operating the way established policy and procedure dictate. She also said Andres and Woodruff are entitled to their opinions and to express them, whether or not she agrees with those opinions.

“The government should not control, nor should it try to control, what people say,” Keller said. “It goes back to the lack of understanding of our process. … Every person is entitled to their opinion.”

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2268.