Early plans for a large Haines Borough subdivision on Small Tracts Road — north of Carrs Cove — have been put on hold while borough staff await information about slope stability and drainage from state scientists.
Citing a housing crunch and demand for affordable land, planning commissioners and borough planner Dave Long expressed interest last spring in moving quickly ahead with the subdivision. But staff have decided to delay the project until the borough has obtained information from the state about the area’s geology.
Researchers with the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys (DGGS) and the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) are analyzing light detection and ranging, or LiDAR, imagery of the future subdivision area.
Borough manager Annette Kreitzer said the researchers approached borough staff with an offer to do LiDAR on the Riley subdivision as part of a borough-wide hazard mapping project conducted over the summer. The research is not funded by local taxpayer dollars, Kreitzer said, adding that she’s uncertain about the state’s timeline.
“We wanted a LiDAR study on the hillside above to make sure it was a good place to put a subdivision,” Long said. “We want to plan a good, safe neighborhood.”
The borough owns about 450 acres of forest northwest of Mount Riley zoned as rural mixed-use land that it has been planning to develop since October 2020. The borough’s preliminary idea is to develop the subdivision in phases, first selling about 35 lots, ranging from one to three acres each. The borough assembly has already allocated $100,000 for survey work and a conceptual design.
Borough staff and officials still have much to decide about the development — not only where to draw property lines but also whether to install utilities and how many roads to build.