Coastal Trail could extend to Ship Creek

$2 MILLION: With federal funds, city, port and railroad mull idea.

ROSEMARY SHINOHARA

Anchorage Daily News

People have talked about running the Coastal Trail down to Ship Creek for ages, but suddenly the project has taken on momentum. The reason is that the big federal spending bill that Congress passed late last year contained $2 million for "Ship Creek improvements," which turned out to be trail money.

A multi-agency group will explore whether it's practical to take the trail from Elderberry Park out onto the mud flats near the end of Ship Creek Point and to create a marshy habitat between the new trail and the shoreline, said Lori Schanche, city project manager for trails.

"For the first time, the city, the port and the railroad are working together," Mayor Mark Begich said. "It's a great project."

The new trail section would be nearly a mile long. It would grant users coming off the popular downtown segment of the 11-mile Tony Knowles Coastal Trail new views of Mount Susitna, the Alaska Range and, if the marsh works, birds attracted to the wetland habitat.

The trail would follow the marsh edge out toward the small boat launch, then veer back to shore. A landing for a proposed ferry service from the Matanuska-Susitna Borough is also in railroad and port concept drawings, near the launch.

The new segment would connect the existing Coastal Trail to the Ship Creek Trail, which begins at the Alaska Railroad headquarters. Generally following the stream, the pathway now under construction will extend two miles to Tyson Elementary School in Mountain View.

Port of Anchorage Director Bill Sheffield said he asked Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens to get the $2 million to hook the two trails together. That money will be added to $1 million from an earlier federal appropriation.

Sheffield said the mud flats route is the only way the trail can be extended across Alaska Railroad land to bypass the main concentration of rails.

"You can't cross 14 or 15 tracks," Sheffield said.

And the railroad owns most of the land in question, a railroad spokesman said.

Sheffield was president of the railroad when it produced the 1999 Ship Creek master plan designating the mud flats trail and the new marsh.

The port revived the idea of creating marshlands because, as part of a current expansion, it will probably be required by the federal government to create some wetlands to make up for wetlands it develops, said Kevin Bruce, the port's director of communication and business development.

The port, undergoing a massive redevelopment, wanted any new wetlands to enhance the Ship Creek area, Bruce said.

The Coastal Trail connection to the Ship Creek Trail is part of the city's trail plan, with a route something like the one being discussed now, Schanche said.

In the early '90s, there were studies on how to make the link, she said. The Coastal Trail now ends on Second Avenue.

"They looked at going down (the bluff) from Second Avenue, but the problem is, everywhere you go, you've got an at-grade crossing of tracks," she said.

Under the route now being pursued, the trail would branch off just before Elderberry Park while still outside -- seaward of -- the train tracks.

Representatives of the port, the railroad and the city met in Begich's office Monday to figure out how to proceed. The first step, Schanche said, will be a hydrology study to see whether a marsh can be created on the flats and how that would work.

The railroad and the port have slightly different concepts going in. The port proposes a larger marsh area.

Opponents of the idea have yet to come forward.

"It will be a real asset if it can be built in an environmentally safe manner," said Paul Laverty, an avid trail user and resident of Government Hill, the neighborhood on a bluff above the port and railroad yards.

Laverty has been using the sections of the Ship Creek Trail that are completed and says it's "gorgeous." The Ship Creek Trail opens up riverfront and takes bikers and walkers through woods and the back yards of industrial plants and office buildings.

A connection to the Coastal Trail will improve it even more, Laverty said.

"Anything that will attract people down to this area for recreation is a good thing," said Holly Kent, director of the Anchorage Waterways Council, which is working to revitalize the creek.

The plans are too preliminary to judge, though, she said: "In general, it's a good idea. Let's just make sure that it's doing more good than harm."

Daily News reporter Rosemary Shinohara can be reached at rshinohara@adn.com or 257-4340.