The Isberg Recreation Area outside Fairbanks is set to nearly double in size. That’s after the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly authorized the mayor to accept a land donation from the Interior Alaska Land Trust on Thursday.
The parcels link up with the existing Isberg Rec Area and its trail system, which is located west of Fairbanks between the Parks Highway and Chena Ridge Road.
Borough Natural Resources Development Manager Daniel Welch said Thursday that, under the agreement, the Borough will take over ownership of the parcels, but the area will be comanaged with the Trust.
“We’re acquiring this via gift, so there’s no payment,” he said. “It expands the rec area by 309 acres. It protects the existing trails and allows for further development of those trails, and provides for dual management, so it’s not just a total management requirement by the borough.”
The Trust is a nonprofit with the mission of protecting, managing or acquiring land for community benefit.
Owen Guthrie, the organization’s board president, told the assembly that the area the Trust is donating to the borough is mostly wetlands. He said that terrain makes it less amenable to non-recreational development, and that the land already has a number of trails already in use, primarily during the winter.
“The parcels include many trails that are beloved and used by those who also use the Isberg Rec Area,” Guthrie said. “And managing it all as part of a unified, larger rec area makes a lot of sense.”
The ordinance approving that strategy had received support from the Borough Parks and Rec Commission and Trails Advisory Commission. It passed the Assembly unanimously Thursday, allowing the mayor to move forward with accepting the donation.
According to a borough memo, the Trust requests only that the Borough retain the area as a public park “subject to future approval processes and appropriations, but with no particular development timeline.”
The Borough memo says, after assuming ownership, the Borough will aim to rezone the two parcels for outdoor recreation through a separate ordinance. It’s currently zoned as Rural Estates, a zoning district intended for low-density residential development.
The land is split up between two parcels, 219 acres in Contentment Estates and 90 acres in the Graceland subdivision. The Contentment Estates parcel comes with conservation requirements attached to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife grant the Trust used to purchase it, but Welch and Guthrie said the plans for the area align with those requirements.