Ten Upper Valley residents turned out last week to lobby for improvements to Emerson Field, located at the intersection of Haines Highway and Mosquito Lake Road.
The Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee hosted a meeting at Mosquito Lake School and Community Center with Mosquito Lake residents, two assembly members and two borough employees on the status of Emerson Field, a borough-owned park.
Mosquito Lake residents are requesting a perimeter barrier and outhouse and upgrades to the baseball backstop and skatepark equipment.
Longtime Mosquito Lake resident Jim Stanford said the park is named after Fred Emerson, a logger who lived on the property about 30 years ago. After his passing, volunteers turned about 3 acres of his property into a park, including a baseball field and a paved area intended as a tennis court. Klehini Land was first owned the property and later sold it to the borough.
Stanford has mowed the field in the summer for years, but said the borough hasn’t properly maintained the park since about 2010 or 2011. He said the chain link fence backstop for the baseball field is in disrepair and overgrown. Brush is overtaking first and third bases. The wooden skatepark equipment on the paved tennis court is splintering and the basketball hoop looks like something out of the movie “Jumanji,” he said.
“It’s appalling to me this park has become such an unsafe place to play,” Stanford said.
Stanford said he’s seen trucks doing “brodies” or doughnuts in the field, which cause dirt ruts that take a long time to flatten. He said he thinks a lack of police presence out the highway has increased instances of vandalism.
Stanford’s wife Deb Stanford compared the treatment of Emerson Field to the borough’s other parks. “What if someone was doing this at Tlingit Park?” she said. The Stanfords said Emerson Field should be treated the same as parks in the townsite.
Mosquito Lake resident Marianne Rasmussen suggested making the field dual purpose by adding a soccer net. Assembly member Sean Maidy said it might be better for the park to be more multi-purpose.
Facilities director Brad Ryan said park upgrades can be costly. A recent estimate to refinish Haines School’s soccer field was about $50,000, well above the borough’s entire $40,000 parks budget. Upper valley residents, and residents boroughwide, pay taxes into the parks budget through the general fund, he said. Ryan said Tuesday he didn’t have a cost estimate for the requests, but said using rocks at the perimeter barrier would be affordable.
Some community members suggested the borough could ask SECON, the construction company working on the Haines Highway project, to donate boulders or logs from demolition to use as a vehicle barrier. Jim Stanford said he would be willing to help local skaters build new skate ramps.
The committee voted unanimously to pass the requests – for a perimeter barrier, safe backstop, bases and skate ramps, and an outhouse – to the borough assembly.