New development sparks concerns

MAT-SU -- Residents in a small subdivision along Wasilla Lake are concerned about development proposed on an empty lot across the street, and their frustration may be the beginning of a growing trend among developers in the Valley.

Eighteen lots make up most of Odsather Circle, and many of the lots have been owned by the same residents for 40 years. David Malette built his home in the 1980s, and he's still considered a newcomer. Members of the tight-knit community often gather to share a meal, a cup of coffee or simply to swap stories. Lately, there's been a common theme to their discussions -- development proposed for the nearly 19-acre lot across the street from these small, lakefront lots.

In April, landowners in the area received a notice from the Mat-Su Borough regarding a proposed change in the plat on the 18.76-acre tract across the street from the lakefront lots. Owned by Wasilla resident Dennis Anderson, a note on the tract's plat prohibited septic systems and "habitual structures" on the tract until it could be proved that the marshy soil on the land would support a septic system. Anderson's request was to remove the plat so single-family homes, using "secondary treatment for septic effluent" could be built.

Howard Nugent, a prominent local developer, is working with Anderson on the project they're calling Pilot's Cove. It's a site-condo type of development, Nugent said, but it's different than the site condos that have caused a stir recently in Anchorage.

"Those were done to try to skirt codes, but this one is being done to try to overdo control," Nugent said.

In this type of development, Nugent said, each homeowner will buy into the condo association, at prices starting at $130,000. From there, he said, they can build their own home, although each development will have to comply with what will likely be a strict set of association codes. Nugent said he hasn't selected a single developer to build the houses -- many of those decisions will be up to the individual owners. He's expecting the homes, once built, to be assessed at between $500,000 and $600,000.

Nugent said the septic system that will be built on the property will be state of the art, and safer for the nearby lake than the outdated septic systems many landowners in the area currently use. The 11 homes planned for the lot would be on a community well and septic system, jointly owned by all the property owners. It would be maintained, Nugent said, by professionals who would be responsible for fixing any problems that might arise with the system.

"It's similar to the system we put in up at the Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge," Nugent said.

Gary Brown, a longtime Odsather Circle resident, in a May 4 letter to the Mat-Su Borough Platting Board, echoed concerns other residents had about the ability of the land to sustain more septic waste than was already being produced.

"The June 1968 soil survey for the Matanuska Valley area lists the soil … as Salamatof peat, which the soil conservation service describes as bog or wetlands," Brown wrote. "Any fill to the wetlands … for construction or septic can adversely affect the water table for the surrounding area."

Brown and other residents called for an environmental impact statement and further investigation by the Army Corps of Engineers. The 11 units proposed for development will all have private lake access, via a canal that was cut into the lake in the late 1970s. Much of that canal is now grown over with brush or shallowed by accumulated dirt, but Nugent said that once the water freezes hard, he'll be able to trench it out again, to allow homeowners along the canal to have access to the lake for their float planes, boats or other watercraft.

"If you added a potential float plane for every one of those lots, this lake will look like Lake Hood," Malette said.

"It's not a mandatory requirement that they have a float plane," Nugent said of the future Pilot's Cove homeowners. The development will be similar to developments along Sand Lake, Nugent said, not the scope of Lake Hood. Although Nugent said he understands the residents' concerns about more plane activity on the lake, he said they shouldn't be surprised -- Wasilla Lake is a designated seaplane base, registered with the Federal Aviation Administration.

Landowners have said they're concerned about the effect of the added traffic on the lake, which is already considered an impaired water body, in part because it has collected runoff from the Parks Highway and other local highways for decades.

The homeowners led a charge several years ago to restrict personal-watercraft use on the lake and won some concessions, such as quiet hours, but believe they lost the battle because the rules are often ignored. They suspect the rules are ignored largely because there's little enforcement available to respond to complaints about late-night jet-skiing.

"It just seems that this could have an effect on many things, from water wells to animal life," Malette said.

Nugent said he's met the state's requirements for development of his project. The septic system, he said, has been fully approved by the state Department of Environmental Conservation, and the Army Corps of Engineers has granted him a permit to dredge a canal from the lake to the eastern side of the tract.

Many of the landowners expressed frustration about not having more involvement in the process, and said they didn't feel as though their concerns were heard by the platting board. Army Corps of Engineers project manager Skip Joy said their concerns have changed the scope of the project.

"They had an impact," Joy said. "It's much smaller because of their comments."

Nugent agreed, saying the development was scaled back by about half because of the residents' concerns about the wetlands area.

Instead of having two canals and a gated community, one canal was eliminated, and the additional roadwork to allow all the lots to be accessed through a gated area was also removed.

That's a bitter pill for some of the homeowners, who said the borough-maintained road is substandard for its current traffic load. Nugent said that with the new revenue from the 11 homes he's building, the road service area should be able to afford an upgrade, if necessary.

Malette said despite raising numerous concerns about the proposed development, he doesn't begrudge Nugent or Anderson the opportunity.

"I don't have any problem with people trying to develop their property," Malette said. "If you own the property, you should be able to develop it."

He, like Estelle Odsather, is simply concerned that the new development will have a lasting impact on their way of life.

"We've been so very spoiled, I think, but it's good to be spoiled," Odsather said. "We're right downtown, but after you get on that little hill, we're just like we always were. People here are interested in what's going on because it affects all of us."

The overriding concern for the longtime Odsather Circle landowners was what they perceived as a lack of oversight by the borough, which translated into few opportunities for public comment.

Platting Director Paul Hulbert said the perceived lack of opportunity for comment is one facet of the type of development being proposed, and the Odsather Circle residents aren't the only ones objecting.

"They're springing up all over the place," Hulbert said. Another similar development is in the works near Colony High School, Hulbert said, and property owners there are asking borough officials how they can allow such development.

"There are no regulations against it," Hulbert said, adding that while borough code specifies that lots must not be smaller than 7,000 square feet in many areas, the code does not specify how many housing units could be built on lots of any size.

And because development permits are not required, there's little oversight if a developer purchases a five-acre tract and chooses to put 100 homes on it. In fact, he said, the only reason the Pilot's Cove project came before the borough for a public hearing and public notice at all was because of the plat note that prohibited septic systems on the property.

Borough Chief Code Compliance Officer Ken Hudson said borough staff have discussed placing limits on the number of housing units a piece of property should have, but public sentiment seems to be that individual homeowner groups or subdivisions should be responsible for requesting and enacting such restrictions for themselves.

The borough has several options available for homeowners who want to designate a particular zone for their group of property, Hudson said, although it takes some initiative for the community to go through the process.

A few homeowners' groups have elected to create single-family residential special-use districts for themselves, Hudson said, and a man near Talkeetna recently subdivided his property and asked to create a new type of zone for the tracts he created -- a large-lot, single-family residential special-use district, in which no lots were smaller than 5 acres.

"What we do not have is the kind of stuff people are used to dealing with in other municipalities in America, which is Euclidian zoning," Hudson said. "Instead of developing a menu people can choose from of what the basic zoning ordinances are, in the borough, now, if someone comes and complains about a particular problem, we create an individual ordinance to treat a specific problem. By the time somebody's pouring concrete next door, that's too late for us to stop that particular procedure."

Hudson said special-use districts, in his view, are most effective when they're put in place ahead of time. Any group of landowners with at least five reasonably contiguous lots, he said, can ask for a special-use district. But, he said, many people don't think about how to preserve what they value about their area until it's

too late.

"That requires thinking ahead of the problem," Hudson said, "and actually trying to resolve some of

the problems that may not exist yet."