Assembly Report for April 17, 2007

SULLIVAN IS OUT, DAN COFFEY IS IN AS NEW ASSEMBLY LEADER:

The Assembly replaced Dan Sullivan with Dan Coffey as Assembly Chair Tuesday night. Debbie Ossiander of Eagle River-Chugiak will remain as vice chair. Voting was unanimous. In addtion to presiding over meetings, the Chair appionts assembly committees, supervises paid assembly staff and acts as official spokesman for the body in public functions. Under the City's charter, the Assembly chair is also next in line to occupy the mayor's office in the event of a vacancy.

Coffey was elected chair after a tough contest for re election to his second three year term. Dan won the votes of 45.7% of midtown voters, edging out challenger Elvi Gray Jackson, who came within 366 votes of 9664 cast, for 41.95% of the vote. Rumored to be considering a run for Mayor in 2009, Coffey intends to polish his image as a moderate and consensus builder to get the job. In the meantime, outgoing Chair Dan Sullivan is also rumored to be considering a run for mayor in 2009. He will have a year to ponder the race as he looks after a downtown watering hole he opened up last year.

ASSEMBLY DELAYS ACTION ON NEW ML&P HEADQUARTERS : Assembly members to delayed action on a contract to construct a new headquarters building for Municipal Light and Power (ML&P) in the new Glenn Square Mall in Mountain View. Citing the need to review comparative costs of alternate sites, required ML&P rate increases to fund the project, the lack of needs assessment, and the need to involve new members to participate on matter was postponed two weeks or until May 1, 2007 upon the motion of Debbie Ossiander.

Before the Assembly was AO 2007-58 which would allow Municipal Light and Power to proceed with a "design-build" contract for construction of a new ML&P headquarters building in the new Glenn Square development in Mountain View. A headquarters building for the city’s electric utility would be built by contractors retained by developers of the new Glenn Square Mall, P.O'B Montgomery. The project will cost ML&P ratepayers $22.7M paid through a rate increase ML&P intends to seek from the Regulatory Commission of Alaska. ML&P would own some 66,000 square feet of the top two floors of a three-story building, with a coffee stand, sandwich shop or an insurance agency on the first level.. A meeting space the community could use for evening meetings would be available. The mall's tenants will include Michaels, Petco, Old Navy, Famous Footwear and Bed, Bath & Beyond, possibly. Best Buy with Target as an anchor store.

LAKE OTIS AND TUDOR PROJECT IS BACK ON TRACK: A multimillion dollar project by Mayor Begich to relieve traffic congestion at the notorious Lake Otis & Tudor intersection was restored to a high priority status on the city’s Long Range Transportation Plan (LRTP) Tuesday night. Satisfied that additional studies have now been completed and that the project can be completed by the end of 2007, Assembly member Dan Coffey joined Midtown colleague Dick Traini in urging passage of AR 2007-78 which put the project back on the priority list in the LRTP and back on schedule to complete by the end of 2008.

Only curmudgeons Dan Sullivan and Paul Bauer voted against the resolution. Bauer argued that somehow that over $10M in federal funds made available through the efforts of Congressman Young were not necessarily appropriated for the Lake Otis & Tudor project, but instead for "congestion relief". He also objected to use of transportation funds for pedestrian improvements and quibbled with estimates offered by traffic experts on reductions in delay - some 300,000 hours saved every year- as unsatisfactory. Both Sullivan and Bauer demanded even more studies of an intersection which has plagued Anchorage motorists for more than thirty years.

MONSTER MALL HEADED TO MULDOON: After a short public hearing Tuesday night, the Assembly approved on a new mall proposed by Cook Inlet Region Inc. and (CIRI) Bowman at the northwest corner of North Muldoon Road and the Glenn highway. Before the assembly was AO 2007-54 to rezone some 95.2 acres to B-3 (General Business). Rezoning of the property would allow construction of almost 1,000,000 square feet of new retail space which wiill dwarf the existing 5th Ave. Mall in the downtown. The new mall would be about three times the size of Alaska’s largest mall, the Diamond Center in south Anchorage.

Developers of the new mall propose a site plan which rings the perimeter with two long rows of big box stores anchored by a Target on the southwest and located within acres of parking spaces which appear to take up almost 70% of the entire 95 acre site. Lined with smaller stores and restaurants on both sides, an access road divides the large parking area into two sectors and is intended to serve a a "main street" of the development. Big box retailers on the perimeter of the development will be accessible only by car, and not by interior walkways or escalators as is common in older malls.

An amendment offered by Debbie Ossiander and accepted by the Assembly addressed potential traffic congestion on Oilwell road by requiring reconstruction of that road to a five lanc facility from the Glenn Highway to the Elemendorf gate, additional construction at the entrance to Bartlett High School and relocation of interior roads in the development.