Park-design potluck is BYOV

The City of Palmer is inviting you to a novel potluck this weekend to help plan a new public park in the Brittany Estates subdivision. It's BYOV - Bring Your Own Vision.

A toddler-age design idea for a new playground in Palmer.
The city hasn't picked any designs yet.

The city hopes to build the new park - they're calling it Wilson Park - on a half acre at South Felicia Street across from Gurn Circle. A new park tracks with the local demographic: Brittany Estates is a dense residential area home to lots of young families. 

But instead of kicking off the planning process with the usual wonky work sessions, Palmer’s community development director Sandra Garley decided to try something new: a community-based brainstorming session at a kid-friendly hour, with home-cooked food. 

Voila! The Wilson Park Design Event was born. The city will host the family-friendly potluck Friday from 5:30 p.m. until 8 p.m at the First Baptist Church at 1150 E. Helen Dr. Children are welcome. Bring a dish and your ideas for a new park. Garley, working with vendors, will bring posters showing different playground equipment designs to choose from.

Saturday morning, landscape architects from Sustainable Design Group in Wasilla will pore over the comments from Friday night and develop a drawing of what the park might look like. 

Then the community is invited to come back to First Baptist Saturday from 2 p.m. until 3:30 p.m. to see what materializes.

The city needs a new park in the fast-growing neighborhoods on the west side of the Glenn Highway that includes Brittany Estates, but also the Hidden Ranch and Greatland Terrace subdivisions too. Right now, there’s only one little “tot lot” off Arctic.

Another possible design idea,
 for 5-12 year olds.

The last new park built by the city? Garley thought for a minute. The MTA Events Center includes a soccer field that opens for the first time this year. Other city parks have been around for a while. 

Whatever comes out of this weekend’s process will go before the city council, where it will resume a more conventional route to creation that includes the requisite grant proposals. 

Garley said she doesn’t know how many people to expect at the potluck Friday night. The city sent invites to nearly 200 people. 

“Fifty or sixty would be awesome. Ten or twelve would be great,” she said. “We’re going to work with whoever shows up.”

She does know what she’s bringing: salmon. 

For more information, go to www.cityofpalmer.org and scroll down to the “Wilson Park Design Event” link or call the Community Development Department at 745-3709.


 -- Zaz Hollander

Palmer to residents - let's talk

Developing Palmer-area businesses like the Pioneer Square Shopping Center

 was one of four goals the city council approved Tuesday. 

What are your top priorities for Palmer? Drop us a line. The Post is always interesting in communicating with the people of Palmer. So, apparently, is the city council. 

Two of the four priorities selected by the council during a Tuesday night goal-setting session centered on community outreach: improving customer service as well as communications between the city and the community. The other two priorities are recreational opportunities and retail/business development. 

Mayor DeLena Johnson convened the session. The Mat-Su Borough held a similar one in late December. A facilitator helped council members winnow down their favorites by giving each member three votes to put behind the priorities they liked. The top four won out. 

“These are goals,” city manager Doug Griffin told the Post on Wednesday. “Now it’s laid on me and my directors and city employees as a whole to come back with what objectives and action plans we have to implement these goals.”  

Basically, the community outreach piece boils down to the city doing a better job telling taxpayers where their money goes. Much of the city’s business centers on day-to-day operations -- water and sewer, garbage collection, roads. But most taxpayers don’t actually run across a city employee unless something goes wrong. They geta speeding ticket, or get a call from a bill collector for an overdue notice. A few council members reported going to Greater Palmer Chamber of Commerce meetings only to be asked just what the city is doing these days, Griffin said.

The retail-boosting piece has been a local priority for years. And the city can use a stronger tax base. But city government walks a fine line when it comes to getting involved with business, said deputy mayor Richard Best. “You want to support your current businesses, you want to encourage growth,” Best said. “On the other hand, some folks don’t want to see big box stores come in.”

Developers have expressed the desire for Palmer to expand its footprint so they can take advantage of city utilities and the resulting lower insurance premiums, Best said. Some citizens want the city to help market the former Carrs building, and the council would like to see it filled, but it’s privately owned by Carr Gottstein Properties. 

“So its their choice to leave it empty or not,” he said. 

The recreation piece, which also includes library services, is a bit tricky too, Griffin noted. The city has no parks and recreation department and just finished a bunch of budget cuts. But the city does have a number of recreational facilities, including the expanding MTA Events Center - completion is now due in March, after initially being promised last fall - and the golf course. A new recreation and trails master plan is nearly done. The goal involves streamlining these resources, Griffin said. 

So what do you think? Are these your priorities for Palmer? The city is all ears. 

 

MTA upgrade slips a bit on delay, seat scarcity

Post photo by Melodie Wright
A $1 million upgrade is underway at the MTA Events Center. 

By Zaz Hollander

Post reporter

If you build it, they will come. 

But what if you don’t have enough seats? 

Last year, the City of Palmer lured the Alaska Avalanche to town from Wasilla’s Curtis C. Menard II Memorial Ice Arena, a roomy venue where the junior hockey team served as an anchor tenant.

The move came with a cost to Palmer, too: city officials here are spending $1.1 million to upgrade the always busy ice rink, the MTA Events Center.

To accommodate the team, the MTA center needed to meet the standards of the North American Hockey League, the body that oversees the Avalanche and 27 other teams. In exchange for $50,000 from the team over a four-year period, city officials agreed to expand the arena with new locker rooms and equipment storage. They also promised to expand seating to hold at least 1,500 spectators. Some $400,000 from the Legislature helped pay for the project. 

Work got under way earlier this year. Then things started to slip.

Word came in late August that delivery delays for structural steel would push the project's completion back to Feb. 1. The Avalanche start their season in a few weeks. For a second year, the team will play without real locker rooms, instead changing in a trailer out back. 

It's also clear, however, that even when the project is done the Avalanche won’t have enough seats to meet the league requirement. Right now, the MTA center has about 800 seats. Once the upgrade is finished, city officials say the center will have about 1,160 seats. The design of the building doesn’t allow for more - and never did. 

But Avalanche owner Mark Lee never told league officials about the seating shortage. The league didn’t find out until this reporter called them Monday.

“One of the conditions of the move was getting the building up to that standard,” said the league’s director of communications, Alex Kyrias. “The league office has not been notified officially by anybody of that standard not being able to be met. Other than that, I’m not sure what to tell you.”

Kyrias said any request for a variance to the seating rule would probably have to be reviewed not only by the league but by USA Hockey, ice hockey's national governing body. He couldn't say what, if any, sanctions the Avalanche might face.

Lee, trying to build a following for his hockey team in a tough market, was less than happy to hear about that phone call.

“Thanks very much,” he said.

When asked about any plans to contact the league, Lee said, “I don’t really think it’s any of your business.”

Told that the business of the Avalanche is the business of the City of Palmer, Lee said he would have no comment.

The city has said it could be possible to add another 400 seats though that would take a whole other construction project and a new addition to the north side of the building. On Tuesday night, the city council unanimously approved changes to the city's agreement with the Avalanche. Among the changes: the city promised to provide at least 1,100 seats in the arena, with a commitment to pursue grant funding for 1,500 in the future. Lee told the council he was OK with the changes. He's been very complimentary of the city's desire to work with this team.

This week, city crews were busy installing wall-mounted brackets for television monitors. Fencing in the upper mezzanine of the arena will give the Avalanche secure storage, public works director Tom Cohenour said.  The city also bought a used washer and dryer and installed plumbing and electric in a utility room so the team can have a working laundry.

City council member Brad Hanson, a longtime hockey and football coach, was instrumental in the construction of the ice arena. Hanson said before Tuesday's meeting that the upgrades at the MTA Events Center are about more than the Avalanche. Hanson said new restrooms will be accessible to soccer players outside. Mayor DeLena Johnson is hoping to hold Palmer High School's graduation in the arena; right now it's slated for the Menard in Wasilla.

It's Mark Lee's responsibility to work with the league on seating, both said.

Hanson, though, said he wanted the story to be less about conflict and more about the good things the arena brings to Palmer.

"This is a good thing for the City of Palmer and the community of Palmer to have a facility like this," he said.