Borough’s town site planning a good idea

We find much to applaud in the Mat-Su Borough’s planning efforts for the Knik/Point MacKenzie area.

On Friday, the borough issued a statement that describes six potential town sites where new borough residents drawn here by construction of a Knik Arm Bridge could live. The borough says that each town site — with names like Fish Creek, Kashwitna Plains, Point MacKenzie and Knik-Ahtnu Village — would use a city water and sewer system akin to what’s available in Palmer or Wasilla.

So far these town sites are just theoretical. Nothing about these lines on a map is binding. But they provide a potential look into the future and an attempt to make some educated guesses as to what the borough could evolve into by the year 2060.

It’s an interesting concept, one we intend to write about in our news pages on Tuesday.

It’s also a great step forward. We have long believed the bridge would be most valuable in the near-term as sort of a relief valve for Anchorage, which developers say has run out of room to build new housing. If that’s the case, and if this bridge would essentially morph the undeveloped raw land of Point MacKenzie into Anchorage’s newest suburb, then we need to plan for it.

The kinds of services required to meet the needs of that sort of population boom takes time and effort to set up. And when that effort is expended in a hurried fashion — rushing to cram a water system, for example, into a rapidly expanding subdivision, or plopping a box store to serve new residents in the middle of a suburban neighborhood — rarely is the result pretty.

We’re pleased the borough is looking forward to manage what will surely be explosive growth if and when that bridge is built, and we’ll be watching these efforts with interest.