Questions Remain After Girdwood Residents Grapple With ‘Holtan Hills’ Development Team

The development team, bookended by lawyers, and Anchorage planning department coordinator Lance Wilber, in blue, flank Connie Yoshimura, owner of CY Investments. (Photo by Soren Wuerth)

By Soren Wuerth

TNews Editor

During a two-and-a-half hour long meeting Tuesday night, Girdwoodians pressed a developer on her vision for a so-called "Holtan Hills" subdivision, a sixty-plus acre housing tract planned to be carved from old-growth rainforest behind the community's school.

The meeting, which followed another a month ago, left the community with little doubt that the vision for the forested hills behind the school rests with Anchorage developer Connie Yoshimura.

And, yet, with a current land plan, or "pro forma", still undisclosed, many questions remain.

Still unsettled, for example, is how people who would live in the subdivision would get out should the main entrance, off Hightower Road, be blocked. 

Yoshimura said she has $125,000 to pay for an "internal" exit onto Crow Creek Road, but she bears no cost beyond her development.

Yoshimura and the Annchorage Planning Dept.'s Lance Wilber. (Photo by Soren Wuerth)

Crow Creek Road is unmaintained, suffers drainage problems, and has an eroding road bed. Planners estimated it would cost $6 million to upgrade the lower portion of Crow Creek Road to municipal standards.

Holly Wells, an attorney representing Yoshimura on the development, said there were discussions regarding snow removal but "those questions regarding that interplay, I don't have an answer for tonight." Others on the panel denied knowing about the connection to Crow Creek Road.

Members of Girdwood's trails committee met with developers earlier to discuss re-routing the historic Iditarod Trail around the planned subdivision, according to Brian Burnett, a member of Girdwood's Board of Supervisors. Though the "terrain to build through is going to be a little more complex" he said he's been "working with Connie" on traill easements. 

But questions on who will pay for moving the trail and whether the work is reliant on volunteers from the community, however, were left unanswered.

About 70 residents either sat in the hall or watched online. The "Holtan Hills" development, first denied by the Anchorage Assembly only to be resurrected a year later, has faced bitter acrimony from a vast majority of residents. A $2 million-plus access road is almost complete for the project, a partnership between Yoshimura and the city's Heritage Land Bank.

“You're here because you care about the community," said former GBOS member Tommy O'Malley, who turned to face the audience at the town's community center. "They're here because they have to be."

"They're paid to be here and I want to thank you all for holding your feet to the fire to get them to do what they're supposed to do, but they've already demonstrated that they don't care for our community sensibilities and they don't have to," O'Malley said, adding he "appreciates a good bamboozle". 

From the onset of discussions in the Assembly, project proponents promised Girdwood residents would have first crack at buying lots.

But providing "first right of refusal" would violate state law, according to an attorney working for Yoshimura, and expose both Yoshimura and the Municipality to potential litigation.

When a local building contractor asked whether all the lots could be sold to a private builder, denying residents from purchasing a lot, an attorney said that would be possible "in theory".

"We are very concerned about how we're going to put these properties on the market and to accommodate the fairness that I think is important," Yoshimura said. " I don't know of a single builder or investor that would walk into a community and purchase all the lots. That doesn't happen in Alaska."

Asked about the amount of deforestation is predicted, Yoshimura said though trees have "aesthetic values" contractors need at least 20 feet of cleared space around a building's.

"We do have and will have a landscape plan, which we implemented in the past," Yoshimura said, "designating certain types of trees that will "grow not die".

While a specific plan for lot design won't come until a platting meeting expected in January, a placard displayed at the front of the room shows 39 varying-size lots in the first phase of the three-phase development.

When a resident suggested limiting lot sizes to prevent them from encroaching on the existing Iditarod Trail, Holly Wells, an attorney for Yoshimura, told the audience they "wouldn't love the answer".

"When a community grows and, whatever form that takes, the community does have to carry the burden and the cost of the benefits that come with growing. A school grows," Wells said. "As much as Girdwood feels like a separate and distinct community it is part of Anchorage."

A preliminary map at the meeting shows planned lots in the forest for so-called "Holtan Hills" subdivision. (Photo by Soren Wuerth)