Anchorage Daily News

To state Board of Fisheries chairman Art Nelson, Don Young's Way, the proposed Knik Arm crossing named after his father-in-law, is hardly a bridge to nowhere.

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For Nelson and his well-connected partners in Point Bluff LLC, Rep. Don Young's span is in fact a bridge to somewhere: their 60 acres of unobstructed view property on the Point MacKenzie side of Cook Inlet. The land sits directly across from Elmendorf Air Force Base, north of the Anchorage port and downtown.

"It's beautiful property," Nelson said.

If a road were built to the land today, it would require about a two-hour commute to downtown Anchorage. But a bridge would change everything. Don Young's Way would mean a shorter drive to downtown than from the Anchorage Hillside -- and make the land much more valuable.

The five-member Point Bluff partnership, of which Nelson has a 10 percent share, was created in December 2002. That was a year before the first, unsuccessful version of Young's highway bill surfaced with money for the bridge.

Nelson's partners in Point Bluff are deeply involved in the commercial fishing industry, which the Fish Board regulates. Among the partners is fish lobbyist Trevor McCabe, a former legislative director for Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.

Nelson, who is married to Young's daughter Joni, said he has discussed the property acquisition in family gatherings with Young, Alaska's 17-term congressman and chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Young didn't return calls left with his press secretary and committee staff.

Stevens served with Young on the conference committee that reconciled the differences between the House and Senate versions of the highway bill. The bill emerged from the conference committee in July with the bridge funding intact and language credited to Stevens that named the Knik bridge after Young.

Nelson said he was hardly the beneficiary of privileged information about Young's intent to fund the bridge. Young was touting a Knik Arm crossing even before he assumed the transportation chairmanship in January 2001. In a speech to Commonwealth North in Anchorage in February 2001, Young said his chairmanship would be a platform for implementing big thoughts: a bridge across Knik Arm, another bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island, a railroad to Nome, magnetic levitation trains between Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

Someone who leaped at the opportunity to scoop up land on the Seward Peninsula after Young's speech might have been disappointed -- the Nome railroad remains an unfunded dream.

But speculators on Point MacKenzie and Gravina Island had reason to cheer last summer when Congress passed Young's transportation bill. It earmarked $229 million for the Knik Arm bridge and $223 million for the Gravina Island bridge.

Critics and satirists ridiculed the spans as the bridges to nowhere, but the projects didn't get into real trouble until Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. Young and Stevens resisted calls to return the money to help fund reconstruction, though they were eventually forced to give up the earmarks, leaving the Alaska Legislature to decide how to spend the combined $452 million.

On Friday, Gov. Frank Murkowski proposed spending a total of $185 million on both bridges, the most he could under federal-state spending formulas.

FISH FRIENDS, LAND DEAL

Nelson's potential benefit from the bridge is not the only issue raised by his interest in Point Bluff. Each of his partners has been deeply involved in the fishing industry. Two of them, Al Chaffee and Mike Hyde, both of Seattle, own or have served as executives with companies regulated by the Board of Fisheries.

When Point Bluff was founded in 2002, McCabe was the head of the At-Sea Processors Association. The organization represents the large factory trawlers that operate in waters off Alaska, under regulations written by federal and state fishery managers. He now lobbies Congress for other state-regulated fishing groups. Until Oct. 1, he was partners with state Sen. Ben Stevens, Ted's son, in a consulting firm called Advance North that also worked with the fishing industry, including salmon fishermen regulated by the state Fish Board.

The fifth Point Bluff partner is Ed Spaunhurst of Mercer Island, Wash., whose main business is Northland Services, a transport company that hauls fish and fuel, among other cargo. Nelson said Spaunhurst and Chaffee are good friends, but added, "most of the people in the processing industry know Ed, because Northland moves a lot of fish."

Nelson said the Point MacKenzie land partnership represented no conflict of interest with the Fish Board because no decision he made on the board could affect the value of the land. And while the partners might have been affected by industry-wide board decisions, such as the setting of the crab harvest strategy for the Bering Sea or salmon restrictions in Bristol Bay, Nelson said that none of them came before the board individually. Aside from his disclosures to the Alaska Public Offices Commission, Nelson said he never was required to declare a conflict involving Point Bluff at the Fish Board.

Nelson was the only partner to consent to an interview. Multiple messages left for the others went unreturned.

Public records tell part of the story of the investment group, though in Nelson's case, his required disclosures to the public offices commission appear to be incomplete. In at least one of his reports, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, for a reader to tell that he was in business with individuals in the fishing industry.

The land in question consists of two adjoining parcels on the bluff overlooking Knik Arm less than a mile south of Goose Bay State Game Refuge and about eight miles north of Point MacKenzie. The northern lot is 38.9 acres, the southern 20.4 acres.

The land is only accessible by boat or rough road and sits about five miles north of the projected west landfall of the bridge.

The Matanuska-Susitna Borough owned the land when someone nominated it for public disposal in 2000. Available borough records don't say who suggested the sale.

On June 28, 2000, the Mat-Su Borough Planning Commission advised against a sale until a regional plan could be completed that included roads. But the assembly overrode the recommendation on Aug. 1, 2000, and directed the land be included in the regular over-the-counter land-sale brochure.

Borough records show the parcels were offered for sale from 2000 to 2002. On Oct. 23, 2002, McCabe filed an application to buy the land, offering a cash bid of $81,600 for the larger lot and $71,000 for the smaller.

While that transaction was pending, Nelson, then 33, was a Republican running a losing campaign for the East Anchorage House seat held by Rep. Harry Crawford, a Democrat.

Nelson said he had known McCabe for several years by then. Nelson worked as a fisheries specialist for the Bering Sea Fishermen's Association from 1996 to 1999, and each year traveled to Washington and met with McCabe, who was Stevens' chief fisheries aide.

In 1999, after McCabe left Stevens to be executive director of the At-Sea Processors Association in Anchorage, Nelson asked for a job. McCabe hired him to run the association's labor program, which including recruiting workers for processing vessels, he said. In 2004, Nelson became the director of the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation, a government supported marketing and research agency. He recently quit to become a lobbyist and fisheries consultant.

Chaffee, an owner of Highland Light Seafoods and Yardarm Knot Fisheries, and Hyde, then president of American Seafoods, were prominent members of the At-Sea Processors Association, Nelson said, and he got to know them then.

Nelson said he knew McCabe was looking around for property across the Inlet.

"We talked about it for a while," Nelson said. "I always wanted to get something out of Anchorage." Nelson was interested in something he could eventually use for a home, not recreational property, he said.

A MATTER OF DISCLOSURE

The purchase of the property and creation of the Point Bluff partnership occurred almost simultaneously with Nelson's appointment to the Fish Board.

On Nov. 5, 2002, Nelson lost his House race to Crawford, and then-Sen. Frank Murkowski was elected governor.

On Nov. 22, the United Fisherman of Alaska sent an e-mail to one of Murkowski's transition teams suggesting that Nelson be appointed to the Fish Board.

Two weeks later, on Dec. 5, McCabe took possession of the property.

On Dec. 16, Point Bluff was organized as a limited liability company under state law, similar to a privately held corporation.

Murkowski appointed Nelson to the Fish Board on Jan. 16, 2003.

On April 2, 2003, McCabe transferred the two parcels to Point Bluff LLC, according to state land records.

Nelson was elected chairman of Fish Board in October 2004.

Nelson said his 10 percent stake in Point Bluff cost him $33,000 to $34,000. The other four partners have 22.5 percent shares, according to McCabe's filings with the state Division of Corporations, the most recent of which he signed July 27, 2004.

As a member of the Board of Fisheries, Nelson was required to file annual financial disclosures with the public offices commission. For his 2003 report, covering the year before, he listed Point Bluff LLC as a business interest. Aside from mutual funds in a retirement account and his family residence, it was his and Joni's only investment, he reported.

His 2004 and 2005 reports failed to list Point Bluff. Instead, Nelson provided only the legal description for the two parcels in the report's section for real estate holdings.

But even then, the description was incomplete in 2004. He provided the township and range but not which of the 36 sections in that six-square-mile block contained the parcels. That omission made it impossible to determine where the property was, that it was jointly owned, or who the partners were. Nelson provided the full legal description that was contained in his 2005 report, though again any mention of Point Bluff LLC was omitted.

In the interview, Nelson said he "goofed that up" in leaving out the section number but said that someone from APOC advised him to list only the land not the name of the business.

Christina Ellingson, assistant APOC director, said she could find no record of anyone giving Nelson that advice.

"It's required to be disclosed in two places," she said. "If a person is in a limited liability company, that needs to be disclosed under business interests. It doesn't matter if it's a major share or not -- that company should be disclosed. And if that limited liability company has real property, that needs to be disclosed under real estate interests as well."

With a business name like Point Bluff LLC, it takes seconds to discover the names of the owners on the state's corporations Web site. With just a legal description of land, that task is much more complicated.

Nelson says his other partners are mainly interested in the land as an investment. He said he'd like to eventually sell his share but keep enough land to build a home, bridge or no bridge.

"It's not like this property's going to be a boom of Quickstops and gas stations, all that kind of stuff," he said. "For me, it was bought as perhaps some investment, perhaps hopefully a place I can build a place on. If the bridge goes through, I may look at building and living there sooner, but otherwise, maybe it would be a few more years down the road."

Reporter Richard Mauer can be reached at rmauer@adn.com. Reporter Don Hunter contributed to this story.