The three concepts for the proposed Kenai River Ranch Property on Funny River Road will be presented to the Kenai River Special Management Area Board at their Thursday meeting.
Lucille Baranko is the project’s planner and says Kenai Peninsula Parks Superintendent Jack Blackwell will present those to board members.
Baranko: “After that we will be taking all the public comments from our public process that we held back in August both in the Kenai area and the Anchorage area and reviewing those comments based on the three concept plans and putting together a final concept plan that will close out this process. This project was solely designed for putting together a concept plan.”
The project was started in 2014 by a legislative request to design a potential use for the Kenai River property which was acquired under the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill habitat protection program.
The cost of the design phase allocated by the legislature was $35,000. There are currently no fund allocated for the implementation of the plan.
Baranko: “Once we have our final concept plan we can put a cost estimate to that plan and then go back to the legislature and say this is what we heard from the public, this is what they requested and this is how much it’s going to cost and would you please fund it.”
Superintendent Blackwell said last September that a lot of the public comments he’d seen had expressed concern about increasing traffic to the area, but at the time not all the comments had been reviewed.
Baranko says an initial survey of the parcel’s topography, roads, and utilities has also been done with that initial $35,000, in case the legislature requests a better cost estimate following the design phase.
The KRSMA Board will meet at 5:30 pm tonight at the Don Gilman River Center on Funny River Road where the three concepts of the ranch property will be considered.