A series of work sessions were held earlier this month regarding the Kenai Waterfront Redevelopment Assessment and Feasibility Study. The City of Kenai is considering redevelopment strategies for the Kenai Waterfront Area to maximize the potential of the area to support a thriving business, residential, recreational, and cultural community.
The area includes an approximate 160-acre area, which includes city-owned and privately-owned uplands and tidelands located in the area adjacent to Bridge Access Road beginning at Millennium Square, located east of the Kenai Senior Center, to the Kenai City Dock within the City of Kenai near the mouth of the Kenai River where it meets the Cook Inlet.
A public visioning session was held in February, according to Donna Logan, Senior Consultant and Project Manager for McKinley Research Group, who tells KSRM:
“We went through a SWOT analysis. It’s a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It’s a way to get people to think of the area and what the possibilities are, but also some of the area’s core improvement. That led to some vision of what this area could look like. Some of the pieces of that vision included a desire for new development in the waterfront area, but not at the expense of impacting the existing users that are there right now.”
At the meetings earlier this month, the group shared the results of the visioning session and introduced a concepts workshop process that involved an overview of the preferred concepts for visioning presented for public input. Three different concepts were developed with a landscape architect who was able to draw the concepts for residents to consider and vote based on preference.
Logan says:
“The one that received the most votes is, and really serving as the basis for the preferred concepts, was one that had a lot of mixed use in it. It incorporated retail, commercial, a little bit of housing, as well as recreation and boardwalks.”
Moving forward, McKinley Research is working to build on that preferred concept to present to the City of Kenai to consider, that involves high level cost estimates of what it would take to see this vision to reality. The group also would look into potential funding sources that could support some of the development and investment.
Another thing the city will need to consider is zoning changes as well as working with the private landowners if they’d like to redevelop their properties, according to Logan:
“This is really something that, frankly, could take ten, fifteen, twenty years or more to get to, but it’s a starting point.”
Click here for more information regarding the project and further details from the previously mentioned work session.
