The main issue is who will accept the liability in the event of an accident. Neither the railroad nor the borough are willing to accept the risk.
Hopkins said in a memorandum to the assembly that Ice Alaska’s buildings are “outside normal permitting” and have “life safety code issues,” particularly buildings used for overnight accommodations.
“Although some insurance could be secured,” Hopkins wrote, “the borough understands that policy exclusions would place financial exposure on the borough’s general fund balance, therefore unacceptable risk to the taxpayers of the borough.”
Ice Alaska Chairman Dick Brickley is reserving comment about the issue until Thursday when a presentation is planned at the Borough Assembly Committee of the Whole meeting.
“Let’s just wait and see how it falls out,” Brickley said. “There’s always hope.”
Ice Alaska hosts the annual World Ice Art Championships and is a long-time railroad tenant on land along the Chena River near the corner of Phillips Field Road and Peger Road.
The borough has been in talks with the railroad since last year in hope of resolving the problem of a pending rent increase that doubles the monthly rate of $3,700. The state-owned railroad says the rent increase was by legislative mandate.
Ice Alaska can’t afford the new rate, and relations between the nonprofit organization and its landlord have deteriorated.
The question now is will the Ice Park move or close?
Brickley has said in the past that the organization will disband rather than move off the railroad’s land. There’s no other suitable location, he said.
The borough has $1.8 million to help Ice Alaska reestablish itself, according to the mayor.
Ice Alaska has been pressing for the borough to trade land with the railroad, expand Pioneer Park across the Chena River and market the park with other winter tourism operators as a winter wonderland.
But a letter to the borough from the railroad as recently as July 23 shows the railroad has no interest in selling or swapping its Chena riverfront land.
Contact staff writer Amanda Bohman at 459-7544.
The pond located on the property produces the best carving ice in the entire world, both for thickness and for clarity. Ice Alaska harvests the ice, stores it, and sells it to carving events throughout the world.
If Ice Alaska can't make a deal, let them walk away. Or close for a year to get another area set up properly so everyone can stop acting like high schoolers.
That is not to mention the wonderful time had by all in the middle of a long dark winter.
I think the dollars spent by the goivernment for this come back in spades to the community. This is value for dollars, something that is absent from many of our other tax expenditures.
This is not a hand-out, it is a hand-up program.
Please leave the tired "socailist" rhetoric behind and look at what this event means to the City and the State.
And anyone out there who would accuse Mr. Brickley and his associates of being socialist needs to have their heads examined!!!
This is as home grown an operation as there ever was pure and simple. Case closed...
I support the Ice Park, the event and the hard fought progress of Ice Alaska. Here-here!
The Governor should pressure the bureaucrats at the Railraod to loose their Iron Grip on this parcel once and for all.
And what make that little seasonal business worth 1.8 million extorted tax dollars?
What is wrong with the borrough people, this is the socialism Fairbanks claims to be agaist.
This is why Fairbanks is suposedly opposed to Obama, and yet our borrough is engaged in it.
I suggest the $1.8 million be used for more snow plowing.
As a point of interest, where does the $1.8 million come from?
.
Why not simply have the borough pay the rent increase and keep the status qua? Would 40,000 a year can easily be made on interest from 1.8 million.