Tenative deal struck to keep monument in current location

WASILLA — After a closed-door meeting this week among veterans groups, the current owners of the Mat-Su Wall of Honor, and the future owners of the property where it resides, there’s a tentative plan to have the popular veterans’ monument shifted inside its current property.

While that might seem like no change at all, potentially major changes to the way the wall is maintained and how future decisions about it are made are also under discussion, according to members who attended the meeting. The site contains the names of living and deceased veterans, and the remains of deceased veterans have been scattered there. Borough officials have said they plan to sell the land where the wall is located to Spring Creek Capital, LLC, an Idaho-based venture capital firm represented in public meetings by president Doug Clegg, for $1.25 million. The property near Mat-Su Regional Medical Center is the current home of the Mat-Su Visitors Center and the wall.

Clegg said he plans to build a 95,000-square-foot, $10-million, 108-unit transitional care facility on the site. While the facility’s primary focus won’t be hospice care, it could serve as an access point for hospice care providers. The acute care facility would house a library, chapel, lounge, and physical therapy wing.

The facility is intended to reflect the aesthetics and history of the surrounding area, Clegg said.

“The goal here is to capture the history of the colonization of the Mat-Su,” he said.

Part of that would involve including the monument, which Clegg said he sees as a potential asset, given the wall’s frequent use as a backdrop for public events (particularly Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day).

“Think of all the free press we’ll get,” he said.

However, for that to happen, the monument will have to relocate within the triangular-shaped lot to a location near the intersection of Best View Court and a small driveway leading to a parking lot below the former home of the Mat-Su Visitor and Convention Bureau.

Clegg said he understands the passions — which have sometimes flared into the public comments section of public meetings — on either side.

“I think we have a lot of great people who have a lot of passion for something that’s a part of their lives,” he said.

Mat-Su Economic Development Corporation President Don Dyer attended the meeting with Clegg.

The plan presented at the meeting would move combine a donation of the land at the planned site of the monument, Clegg said. That land would then be donated to a nonprofit corporation run by representatives from local veterans’ groups, including American Legion posts in Palmer and Wasilla, and the local AMVETS organization, Dyer said.

That would mean the Schwulst family — caretakers of the wall for more than two decades and present owners through the guise of the Areawide Service Council, of which John Schwulst is president — would have to relinquish their ownership of the monument, Dyer said.

“From the name of that company, it sounds like it’s a company that’s a nonprofit,” he said. “It’s not a nonprofit. It’s a regular company. It actually physically owns the wall and the assets around it.”

Spring Creek would provide electrical wiring to the site for lighting, and the borough would pay for relocation. Numerous details would need to be hammered out, including the structure of the holding company, according to Dyer.

“It’s the broad strokes, and of course all the veterans groups will have the proposal put to them,” he said. “They’ll all get feedback for the different posts. It makes it very clear who owns what assets and the veterans have been pretty outspoken in their desire to own control of the wall and to maintain it and all that.”

John and Hazel Schwulst, the monument’s present owners, declined to provide details about the meeting, other than to say they had attended. John Schwulst said no final decision had been made.

“They’re all talking, but who knows what’s going to happen,” he said.

Bert Cottle, who hosted the meeting in a conference room adjacent to the city council chambers, also declined to discuss particulars, other than to characterize the meeting as an informational forum and to say future meetings were planned.

The next step in the process will be for representatives who attended the meeting to take the idea of joint ownership back to their respective chapter posts.

James Petito, commander of American Legion Post 35, said he liked the outline of the future plans, but was ultimately flexible about the wall’s final location.

“I think the wall should stay there, but if it can’t stay there, it can’t stay there,” he said.

Contact reporter Brian O’Connor at 352-2270, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.