News-Miner Editorial
Lakes alive
Ice Alaska move can only help improve lake area
Published Tuesday, March 25, 2008
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Stumble It!A “sentry” stands guard at the end of South Cushman St. as the road rises to cross the levee. There, to the left, atop the levee, standing in blackened contrast to the snowy landscape is a burned-out sedan.
Welcome to the Tanana River Lakes area.
The Fairbanks North Star Borough has a better vision for this area, and the more community support it receives, the better. The potential is indeed great, but it will take no small effort to clean up and police what remains a magnet for late-night partying, litter and abandoned vehicles.
The borough Parks and Recreation Department and numerous volunteers have made fantastic headway in cleaning up the area, but obviously undesirable activity continues.
Turning the area into a bona fide recreation area and bringing to it an established tenant like Ice Alaska and its World Ice Art Championships will help.
Ice Alaska and the borough announced a tentative agreement that would move the group’s headquarters and the annual winter event from its home at Peger and Phillips Field roads to the Tanana Lakes Recreation Area. The Ice Park and championships could be established at the site as early as 2011.
The agreement is a benefit for the nonprofit Ice Alaska, allowing the organization to develop a 30-plus-acre chunk of the 750 acre recreation area under a $1 annual lease. The development also is beneficial to the borough and the community.
Ice Alaska has plans for a new building and an adjacent RV park. These are things that will raise the value of and interest in the Tanana Lakes area.
Positive, constructive community interest and the added traffic that will come to the area with this kind of permanent tenant can only help displace less-desirable activity.
The lease agreement requires approval from members of the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly so the project can move forward, and approve it they should.
Community Discussion
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How long until some new tenant decides that the rifle range must be relocated so that their new land is less noisy. How long until someone decides that the fast-eroding banks of the tanana river should be reinforced. how long until someone realizes that we are talking tens of millions of tax dollars that should be returned to taxpayers screaming about high property taxes?
Currently, I'm just close enough to walk to the Ice Park. It's in the range of 30 or 45 minutes away -- which is walkable on a not-too-cold day -- and much closer to those who live near the pedestrian bridge outside Pioneer Park.
But will anybody -- anybody AT ALL -- be able to walk to the Ice Park when it's at Tanana Lakes?
Has the Borough arranged for convenient public transit that will take people there and back?
Or will the Ice Park now become a "drivers-only" event? What will this do for those too poor, too young, or too old to drive a private automobile?
I drove a dump truck one summer hauling gravel from the river, and driving back there on those trail-roads was awesome. It is so pretty back there. Lots of birds and trees, I loved being there. Yes, there were a lot of abandoned cars too.
Why mess with the Tanana Bad Lands? There are plenty of tax paying citizens that use that area for recreation. Snowmachining, 4 Wheeling, Dirt Biking, Mud bogging, Racing, Plinking (shooting in a more in-formal way than is generally accepted at the shooting range), and of course Partying. Just because these activities aren't as 'cultured' as ice carving doesn't mean they are any less valid. I'd be willing to bet more borough tax payers have done one of those activities down there than went to this years ice art. Of course right now no one is saying that those activities would be banned down there if more cultured events moved in, but it would be inevitable.
back off thomas
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