Borough hands park to Wasilla

PALMER — With little fanfare and no discussion, the Mat-Su Borough handed an 80-acre park to the city of Wasilla Tuesday.

“They’ve been after this property for as long as I’ve been around,” Borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss said in his weekly podcast. “For one reason or the other, it just never seemed to get done, so I’m glad to work with the city on that.”

Bert Cottle, Wasilla’s deputy administrator, said the park, Lake Lucille Park next to Iditarod Headquarters, was federal property before it was the borough’s. It has camping, bathrooms, an overgrown amphitheater, soccer fields and three walking trails.

“There was a caboose over there at one time and that caboose has been moved to Nunley Park across from city hall and repainted,” Cottle said.

Not the best park, certainly, but not the worst.

“It’s rustic. There’s not sewer and water and electric, it’s what they would call dry camping,” Cottle said.

He said the borough did the best it could with the park, but the city has cared for it for the past three years.

“It’s a neat park it just needs some TLC, some tender loving care,” he said. “We’ve had a camp host out there for the last couple of years, which has helped.”

But the city has that TLC all primed up and ready to go.

“We have a $100,000 grant to go in there and build some boardwalks and a place to launch a canoe,” Cottle said.

That grant came from the state. Cottle said work on the boardwalk will likely start once the lake freezes up and it’s easier to drive piles into the lake bottom.

The Pop Warner football folks have talked to the city about using the fields after the soccer season ends, and Cottle said that’s likely going to happen.

The transfer of ownership is not quite official yet. The ordinance passed Tuesday requires Wasilla get a surveyor to the park to make sure nothing is encroaching on its eastern edge, the National Parks Service has to approve the transfer and the city has to accept responsibility for the park.

Still, Cottle said Wasilla is pretty excited to spruce the place up. It’s kind of overgrown and a little buggy.

“I mean, it needs to be cleaned up and some brush cut,” he said.

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