Anchorage

Short-lived Anchorage homeless campus idea nixed over 'sticker shock'

Two weeks after the surprise announcement that a massive new homeless campus was to be built near the gates of Kincaid Park, Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan nixed the idea at a community meeting in West Anchorage on Tuesday night.

Services for Anchorage’s homeless and working poor are very much needed in every area of the city, the mayor said. The project is being scrapped due to “sticker shock,” he said. To get the campus up and running would have cost $50-80 million, he said.

More than 100 Anchorage residents, mostly homeowners in the Raspberry Road and Jewel Lake area, packed into a gymnasium at Sand Lake Elementary on Monday to voice concerns about the homeless campus. An estimated 6,700 people are homeless in Anchorage, the state's largest city, though that number fluctuates wildly between the seasons.

Sand Lake Community Council President Daniel Burgess immediately gave the floor to the mayor Monday night. Nearly all the attendants had come learn more about the homeless campus dubbed Raspberry Court, or decry its development. Sullivan about cleared the gymnasium shortly after he announced the application to obtain 66 acres for the housing-first project will be pulled Tuesday morning.

Airport only other applicant for federal parcel

The only other applicant for the land near Kincaid Park is Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. The city may apply to use a small amount of acres on the north side of Raspberry Road for snow treatment. Ted Stevens also has an application out for the land, and it’s likely their needs outweigh the city’s plans, Sullivan said.

Sullivan said he told staff at the municipality’s Department of Health and Social Services that in order for the project to move forward, it needed to be affordable. The mayor didn’t elaborate on what amount of resources could make the campus sustainable, but Sullivan said he met with the city’s numerous social service providers – Catholic Social Services, Salvation Army, and the Alaska Mental Health Trust, among others – and together they could not determine how to maintain Raspberry Court and its ambitious campus of services.

Instead, resources for the city’s homeless will go toward smaller projects. There are areas that need redevelopment, Sullivan said.

There are occasionally properties which are the perfect fit for the working poor, Sullivan said, adding that he thought the 66-acre tract at the end of Raspberry Road would have been an optimal location: far from “peer groups and certain influences” that may “lead people off the right path” and into transience.

“It would’ve been a good spot, but the scale is beyond what we consider affordable,” Sullivan said.

The Sand Lake Community Council hadn’t yet held a meeting to officially take a stance on the project, and the council’s president Burgess said he’d been unaware of the mayor’s decision to nix the homeless campus.

The council will continue to work with the airport on the West Anchorage District Plan, which includes expansion projects, Burgess said.

“I think the major thing is that the community’s not going to have the land used for something else, other than what was previously assumed,” he said.

Email Jerzy Shedlock at jerzy(at)alaskadispatch.com or follow him on Twitter at @jerzyms.

Jerzy Shedlock

Jerzy Shedlock is a former reporter for Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2017.

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