Borough looks to future

PALMER — Ever wonder what the Valley’s going to look like in 20 years? 50? A century from now? Well, the Mat-Su Borough has wondered as well, and invites residents to look into its crystal ball.

It’s not actually a crystal ball, borough planner Emerson Krueger said. Calling it that would imply an element of magic in the “Mat-Su Build-Out Study.”

“It almost gives it the wrong feel, because this is the most analytic growth model that has ever been done for the Mat-Su Borough,” he said.

The study is, at its heart, a series of maps showing what areas are going to be developed. Sounds easy enough, but to make a realistic assessment, planners had to take numerous factors into account.

Probably the biggest limiting factor was water and sewer systems. Today, the vast majority of the borough contains homes on their own private water wells and septic systems.

“What we’ve seen in various parts of the borough is when you try to get down to the quarter-acre lots, about 7,000 square feet, you have to have community water and community sewer,” Krueger said.

Those kind of sewer and water systems are expensive to build and expensive to maintain. That’s why they’re so rare.

The study assumes that, for the most part, the borough will continue to develop with homes on private water and septic, which means neighborhoods are unlikely, except in a few instances, to get much more tightly packed than homes on 1-acre lots.

The maps are very colorful, but what does the study mean for the borough?

Krueger said that depends. The borough is looking to build relationships with state transportation planners to help the state figure out where it needs to build roads to meet projected growth.

The borough is using the data to plan where future public facilities should be located — schools, fire stations and, to a lesser extent, libraries and community centers.

“The school sites that are being selected are really being selected based on the student population densities that we expect over the next 20 to 30 years,” Krueger said.

He wants to get the data into the hands of the private sector. Business people looking to build a new store could find it very useful to know where people will tend to cluster in the future.

He said the data is pretty accurate, although there are some wildcard factors at play, like the proposed Knik Arm bridge. If the bridge is built, it’ll mean a residential building boom in Point MacKenzie, since the area will be as close to downtown Anchorage as many of that city’s suburbs.

But, Krueger said, the bridge is a wildcard only when you talk about the speed of development. There’s nothing to suggest that homes there will get any more tightly packed than that 1-acre lot size. The area might be developed faster, but it won’t be more densely populated.

So how do you go about making those kinds of long-term projections? Krueger said the borough’s been at it since 2008.

They put together a study in 2009 and presented it to the public. That model had every available piece of land developed.

“We took the first model and we had a series of open houses and the public told us this does not look like it will ever happen,” Krueger said.

So the borough started over in 2010.

“We started identifying areas of the borough that we didn’t anticipate any future development,” he said. In other words, areas where someone had already built a house where people were comfortable building.

“What we have now, it looks believable, and the responses we’re getting back at these meetings are positive,” he said.

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

What: Mat-Su Build-Out Study Open House

When and Where: May 9, 7 to 9 p.m., Mat-Su Borough School District, 501 N. Gulkana St.; May 10, 7 to 9 p.m., Central Mat-Su fire station 6-1 (downtown Wasilla)

On the Web: View the build out study at tinyurl.com/74bn2k3.