Mayor wants to plan for future towns

MAT-SU — If Mat-Su Borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss has his way, the borough will set aside land for two future town sites this month.

DeVilbiss said there are two town sites he’d like to see planned. One is adjacent to the Goose Creek Correctional Center and the other in the Fish Creek area.

The Fish Creek town site was talked about in that area’s master plan as a place to serve future small agricultural parcels, but the area is about to see a whole lot of development. Port MacKenzie is expanding. The Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority is buying up land on which to build bridge landings for a causeway between Anchorage and Point MacKenzie.

“The thing that kind of woke me up was realizing that Alaska Intertie (power line) is going down the other side of the Little Susitna as well as probably the gas line, and if those people have no idea that there’s been a town site talked about it could complicate things later on so the sooner we have something there the easier it will be for people to work around,” DeVilbiss said.

In addition to the railroad, a possible road and the Intertie running through that corridor, DeVilbiss said he’s also heard talk of a gas line. One potential natural gas pipeline from the North Slope proposed on a state level terminates at Point MacKenzie. Running it along the rails would seem to make sense.

“It’d be nice to have a single corridor in roughly the same vicinity and then the rest of the development can be around that,” DeVilbiss said.

The other town site, the one by the prison, is probably more self-explanatory.

“The other one is more imminently needed for housing for people at corrections, both employees and we’re going to have 1,500 inmates that are going to have relatives that would like to be not too far away,” DeVilbiss said. “Plus, we’ll have housing needs for port development and the railroad’s talking about moving their entire maintenance yard out of Ship Creek down there over to the point.”

People, the mayor pointed out, tend to want to live near where they work.

The town sites envisioned in both areas master plans include room for schools, shopping, post offices, gas stations and housing. DeVilbiss said that, in theory, a town site could develop outside of the ones delineated on paper.

“From a developer’s standpoint they would be a lot more comfortable working in something that’s already zoned and conceptualized,” DeVilbiss said. “We intend to use the developers to flesh this out and get a feel for what might be needed, especially for high-density housing.”

Of course, all of this amounts to planning, something to which, judging by letters to the editor, there’s a perception amongst the public that this current assembly and mayor are opposed.

DeVilbiss said he is opposed to planning that restricts private landowners, but the town sites would be on public land.

“I don’t have any problem with laying some restrictions on public land because that kind of lays things out in an organized way without taking away somebody’s property rights after the fact,” he said. “That’s a big difference in my mind.”

And, since a lot of the planned development would be commercial, it’s another way to get public land in private hands, DeVilbiss said.

The town site resolution is in front of the assembly Jan. 15.

DeVilbiss said that, so far at least, everyone has been with him on this one.

“I’ve yet to find somebody opposed to it,” he said.

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