Borough to sell land for bridge

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough Assembly voted Tuesday to sell 300 acres of land to the Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority to build an access road for the bridge.

The borough says it got an independent assessment of the land at Point MacKenzie and came up with a fair market value of $1,279,400, which is what the borough will charge KABATA.

KABATA is working, through a planned partnership with a private firm, to build a bridge linking Point MacKenzie and downtown Anchorage. The plan to buy land on the Anchorage side has been relatively emotional and controversial, but on the Mat-Su side includes mostly borough land. The borough has repeatedly expressed its support for the bridge, and the land sale passed unanimously.

The nearly $1.3 million price sells the land rather than granting KABATA access, meaning that even if a bridge isn’t built, the land still belongs to KABATA.

“If perchance the KABATA project doesn’t happen in the time that we think it should we as the borough think it’s very valuable to have this road right there,” borough manager John Moosey said. “Having a road there impacts positively on our port development, so we think this is a very good thing.”

Nancy Cameron with the borough’s land management department said there are some conditions on the sale.

“They cannot convey for any other reason interest in the right of way without written permission of us,” she said. “They would have no ability to lease it or sell it or do anything without our permission.”

As for resources on the land, Cameron said KABATA would be able to use those resources to build its road, but would not be able to sell them.

Assemblyman Ron Arvin asked if there was a possibility the borough could just give the land to KABATA.

“We have conveyed a number of pieces here and there in the public interest,” Arvin said, referencing land transfers on projects like the Point MacKenzie Rail Extension.

Cameron said that during negotiations, KABATA had asked the borough to donate the land, possibly in exchange for $1 million worth of upgrades the borough had agreed to do to roads in the area and which KABATA said it had not.

“I was able to show them exactly where we had honored that,” Cameron said. “That discussion kind of dropped.”

The sale will not end KABATA’s need for land on the Mat-Su side of the span. Still to figure out is rights to the “tidelands” that the bridge will require. Those are also borough lands, but when the borough took them over from the state it agreed not to relinquish it in a sale like it’s doing with the other lands.

“We are in the midst of getting an appraisal on the value of the tidelands,” Cameron told the assembly. “We can only convey those by easement, not in fee like we are with the uplands. We will always retain an interest in those.”

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