The Kodiak Island Borough Lands Committee is teeing up more borough-owned land to sell to the public. During its most recent meeting on Oct. 13, the committee recommended releasing a parcel of land for sale between Beaver Lake Loop and Von Scheele Way. It’s the fourth parcel in that area the committee recently sent the Borough Assembly to approve as surplus for sale.
Corey Gronn works for Natives of Kodiak, an Alaska Native Urban corporation and a lands committee member. His seat on the committee is designated for an Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act representative. He encouraged the committee to continue pushing surplus properties to the borough assembly.
“What I’m hearing is it’s not necessarily affordable housing, it’s about putting more housing on," Gronn said. "But I think for our purposes, we need to get the land out, is what I’m hearing from the community.”
The committee is also asking the borough assembly to sell 10 lots of land for a new subdivision in Chiniak off of King Crab and Spruce streets.
The land isn’t accessible by road yet. The outgoing borough mayor Scott Arndt said during last month’s meeting on Oct. 13 that an existing logging road must be extended.
“Right now that’s going to take more construction. That’s a future project for future development down the road," he said.
Arndt estimated that the borough owns 600 acres, much of it undeveloped land, in that area of Chiniak, which is roughly 40 miles south of Kodiak.
Ahead of last month’s meeting, three Chiniak residents sent letters to the lands committee all urging the borough to sell more of its land in the rural community on the Kodiak road system.
Chiniak resident and business owner, Brenda Friend, told the committee that this has been a long time coming.
“While my husband Jerrol was mayor of the Kodiak Island Borough, he created the lands committee and the purpose was to open up more land," she said.
"That was in 2013, 12 years ago. And very little movement has been made.”
In part that’s been due to the lack of committee meetings. This was only its third meeting this year. From 2019 through 2024, it only met four times.
The borough clerk said the committee’s surplus land proposals will likely be on an upcoming borough assembly meeting agenda in January.
And, as a disclaimer, KMXT General Manager Jared Griffin is also the Kodiak Island Borough mayor, who chairs the lands committee. Under KMXT’s policy on editorial independence, Griffin does not make editorial decisions or review stories before publication.
