Knik bridge clears Assembly hurdle - Despite testimony from foes, project forwarded to the city's list of priorities.
By KYLE HOPKINS
Anchorage Daily News
March 14, 2007
The Anchorage Assembly voted overwhelmingly late Tuesday night that the Knik Arm bridge should go on the city's to-do list of transportation projects.
Hours after the names of two potential investors who might build the bridge linking Anchorage and Point MacKenzie first surfaced, the Assembly voted 8-2 to recommend putting the project on the long-range transportation plan as long as certain conditions are met.
"All it does really is keep the planning process alive, and I don't have a problem with that," Assembly Chairman Dan Sullivan said earlier in the day.
Bridge supporters want to see their project on the list because it would keep the much-debated project alive by unlocking federal funding and signaling to investors that Anchorage actually wants the bridge.
A new poll paid for by the Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority says most people in Anchorage and Mat-Su favor a bridge. But most everyone who showed up to talk to the Assembly at two public hearing this week and two weeks ago said they don't, and that the bridge is an under-cooked or bad idea.
"I like to think of it as 'bridgezilla' because it's going to eat up transportation projects that are more important to our community," said Randy Virgin, director of the Alaska Center for the Environment.
Other speakers said the toll bridge would threaten beluga whales in Cook Inlet, harm Government Hill and snarl traffic.
Melanie Ellis, a Government Hill homeowner, was one of roughly 20 speakers and apologized for her quaking voice. She told the Assembly that she works in a cubicle and isn't used to public speaking.
"I want to keep my home," she said, then nodded silently.
Bridge supporters, meantime, see a chance to finally build a connector that's been talked about for decades and say it can be done without more public money.
A few people spoke in favor of the bridge, saying people would be happy to have it after it was built and that it's necessary for Anchorage to have a place to grow.
Henry Springer, head of the bridge authority, said proof of the bridge's viability would come when private investors are willing to become partners in the project.
"Nobody is going to put a private dollar in there if they don't feel that those estimates are correct. They're not going to risk a $500 million investment in something that's going to have big overruns," he said in a phone interview Tuesday afternoon.
The Assembly vote was only a recommendation. Ultimately, the decision whether to put the bridge on the influential list is up to a five-member committee of state and local officials.
That committee includes Mayor Mark Begich and Assemblymen Dan Sullivan and Chris Birch.
Birch and Sullivan both voted in favor of adding the bridge to the list Tuesday, along with Assembly members Paul Bauer, Bill Starr, Dan Coffey Debbie Ossiander, Ken Stout and Dick Traini.
Downtown Assemblyman Allan Tesche and South Anchorage Assemblywoman Janice Shamberg voted against adding the bridge to the long-range transportation plan. Pamela Jennings, who represents West Anchorage, was not at the meeting.
A substitute resolution, proposed by Tesche, would have said the Assembly opposed the bridge project. It was voted down.
If approved, the Assembly's recommendation would come with a catch. It says that the bridge should only go on if certain conditions are met, including:
• Worries about the environmental impact of the bridge, and how it will be paid for, are addressed.
• The project wouldn't drain any money from other transportation projects or local coffers.
• There is some kind of plan to minimize problems the bridge might create for Government Hill neighborhoods.
• No construction work begins on the Anchorage side until the city gets to review the bridge's design.
• KABATA must pay for the design and construction of a project that would funnel traffic to Ingra and Gambell streets -- rather than A & C streets -- that would open by 2017 after the bridge is built.
Begich suggested the conditions, based largely on the recommendations of a city transportation technical advisory committee. Midtown Assemblyman Dick Traini said the caveats address some of the concerns raised by the public, such as ensuring local money doesn't go to the bridge.
The authority estimates the bridge would cost about $600 million and plans for private investors to pay for most of it.
The authority had asked potential private investors who would fund, design, build and maintain the project to make their first pitch by Tuesday afternoon.
Two groups responded by the 4 p.m. deadline, said bridge authority spokeswoman Mary Ann Pease.
One was URS Corp., which bills itself on its Web site as one of the largest engineering design firms in the world and as a leading federal government contractor. The other is a group calling itself the "KAC constructors consortium."
One of the proposals weighed 150 pounds, said Pease, and the bridge authority is just starting to review all the paperwork.
Springer said in a phone interview that the bridge authority hopes to decide on its partner for the bridge project by the end of the year.
The bridge authority is a state agency, created by the Legislature in 2003 to figure out how to build and pay for the project. In 2005, Congress set aside $200 million for the bridge in a transportation-spending bill, but the so-called "earmark" disappeared as watchdog groups complained the bridge was a waste of money.
