In the northeast corner of Campbell Creek Park, homeless people who wanted to drink were known for gathering on a metal fish-viewing platform.
This summer, that changed. Under pressure from officials and a neighborhood group, the city's parks and recreation department removed the platform. Parks officials said they were fielding increasing complaints from park visitors harassed by groups of aggressive, drunk people.
Whether there has been any lasting change since then depends on who you talk to.
City officials and people who work in the area say it's much quieter now. Police officers have noticed a dramatic drop in calls to the area of 46th Avenue and Folker Street, said Renee Oistad, police spokeswoman. The calls haven't shifted to a different location in the park, Oistad said.
But people who used to gather at the deck say they've simply moved to other spots along the greenbelt to drink.
Four people gathered across the footbridge from the deck's former location to drink high-alcohol beer from cans on a recent Friday. They sat on logs at the edge of the park lawn.
Tom Kherberg, who said he lives in a camp on the Campbell Creek greenbelt a couple miles away, said the park is still a gathering place.
"It didn't change nothing. It just changed the spot where they're hanging out."
John Rodda, director of the Anchorage Parks and Recreation Department, said he decided to order the platform's removal after hearing numerous complaints from park visitors and from Anchorage Assembly members.
He said the platform had turned into a "serious congregation area" for drinking and drug-dealing. Park visitors told him about being bothered when they tried to pass through the area. He said no one was ever injured, but park visitors felt unsafe.
Rodda said his final decision came after he personally was confronted by a group of people at the platform who demanded to know what he was doing there.
"It became necessary," Rodda said.
Jeff Wooden is a founding member of Take Back Our Parks, a neighborhood organization created in 2008 to call attention to problems at Campbell Creek Park. He said he complained to anyone who would listen.
Now that the deck is gone, so is much of the problem, he said.
"It took six years to get that platform out of there."
On July 19, when the platform was removed, pictures were posted on the organization's Facebook group celebrating the change as a "milestone." Rodda said parks staff have noticed fewer people gathering at the old platform spot since it was removed.
Kandi Williams, owner of Cool Beans espresso shack near the corner of Folker Street and Tudor Road, said she's noticed a difference too.
"It's amazing, something like that disappearing and all of a sudden it's quiet around here," Williams said. At the end of the summer, she said she noticed more families spending time in the space where the platform used to be.
For Paul Duke, who said he is homeless and has been a regular at the park for seven years, the changes are overstated. It's always been quieter in winter, he said.
"In the summer, they hang out over here," said Duke, referring to the area directly south of the creek from where the deck was. "Homeless people aren't going to go away."
Kehrberg agreed. Crowds of drinkers in the park swelled to 20 people -- not all of whom were homeless -- many nights this summer, months after the deck was removed.
"It was just more like a direct attack right on us. Any reason to just do something to get us to move," Kehrberg said. "But, in my opinion, does that fix a problem or does that just relocate the problem somewhere else where it's going to bother another person?"
Still, Duke said he had seen too many police and EMS responses to the deck. He's not sorry to see the structure gone. It was in disrepair anyway.
"I planted a bunch of grass seed underneath it when they pulled it out," he said.
Apart from taking out the deck, Rodda said the city is constantly grooming parks to discourage bad behavior. Also over the summer, the city flattened a mound in Springer Park that had become a "hiding place," he said.
Last summer in Town Square Park, the city parks department cut down nine trees to offer less seclusion for illegal activities, officials said. At Pop Carr Memorial Park in Midtown and at Campbell Creek Park, brush has been thinned to increase visibility, Rodda said.
"It's the constant effort of trying to keep the parks clean and safe," Rodda said.
Wooden, the Take Back Our Parks chair, said he has noticed that some merely have moved to across the footbridge. He has also heard others have begun to hang out at a similar viewing platform slightly further east on the Campbell Creek Trail near Piper Street.
"Yeah, well it's a block away from me," he said.
Williams, the coffee shack owner down the street, said none of the recent changes represent an improvement for the lives of homeless people in her area, nor the alcoholism at the root of the problem as she sees it.
"Now, it is a fact, though, that the handful that I still do see over here, their camps are deeper in the woods."