The Kenai Peninsula Borough will buy 80 acres of property near Seward with the goal of opening land for residential development. That’s after borough assembly members received a road feasibility study on which the sale was contingent.
The 80-acre piece of land is referred to as the “Blueberry Hill” property. It’s just north of Seward, near Salmon Creek Road and east of the highway. But it’s not really the Blueberry Hill property the borough is interested in.
The 80 acres blocks access between existing roads and a much larger piece of borough land – more than 2,000 acres. The commission study analyzed how feasible it’d be for the borough to build an access road on the Blueberry Hill property.
The borough thinks its stranded 2,000 acres could be turned into a residential development. Housing availability on the eastern peninsula is notoriously limited.
In April, borough assembly members gave the borough permission to buy the Blueberry Hill property for $1.2 million. But they made the purchase contingent on the study. RESPEC Corporation got the almost $33,000 contract and finished the study earlier this month. The borough split the cost of the study with the Alaska Mental Health Trust, which also owns land next to the Blueberry Hill parcel.
The firm looked at three potential options, concluding that while the area’s steep ridges make road construction challenging, it’s feasible to put in a road that meets borough standards.
The first two options consider an existing pioneer road that serpentines up the hillside to the property. The first option follows the road exactly, while the second diverges slightly. But neither configuration is what the study recommends. Instead, it proposes the so-called “South Loop Allignment.”
That road heads south from its proposed starting point and then curves back up. The study says the road would have a consistent 9-10% grade and level off at the summit. The area where the road would end at the top is relatively flat and in the center of the borough’s land, which the study says could make it a good starting point for development.
Now that the study’s complete and a feasible road option has been identified, Borough Land Management Officer Aaron Hughes says they’ll close on the 80-acre Blueberry Hill parcel. A June 10 memo from Hughes says the borough will need to do additional engineering and geotechnical work to pin down an exact route for the road to follow.
