NORTH STAR COMMUNITY COUNCIL      

 

The North Star Community Council will not meet over the summer.

See you in September!
 

 

North Star Community Council History

North Star Community Council has a long history of success in its small but lively part of our city that is located between the downtown and midtown neighborhoods of Anchorage.

 

North Star pressured the Salvation Army to relocate a counseling center that had been located at the corner of Spenard Road and Hillcrest Drive. Counselees were in the streets all day and into the night.  In 2001, the new tenant parked buses all over residential streets.  In the winter they plowed snow into the street.  Today the building is occupied by a business appropriate to the area.

 

North Star has put pressure on area liquor stores to clean up their operations.  It has also cooperated with several stores to identify inebriates.  North Star helped put a troublesome liquor operator out of business ("A "Street between Fireweed and Northern Lights) and prevented Tesoro from opening a liquor store two lots away at their new gas station at Northern Lights and A Street less than two years later.  Mike Huelsman spearheaded a committee to address the problems of the homeless in camps.
 

Barbara Pepek led the effort to paint the mural on the Romig Hill retaining wall back in 1999.  Barbara is now leading another group to repaint the wall.

 

North Star folks helped make the Duck Walk at Westchester Lagoon a reality.  This place is much cleaner and safer place for ducks and people today.  Efforts continue to make the ‘Walking Lane’ safer.  Mike Mitchell stopped the re-striping of Spenard Road, as the state was about to eliminate the ‘Walking Lane’ that had been put in place with Duck Walk funds.

 

North Star has a long history of working with North Star Elementary School.  North Star residents work in the school, read to kids there, and cooperate with the school on cleanup efforts, particularly on the infamous stairs down the bluff and cleaning up inebriate camps.  NSCC volunteers have helped with the school’s health fair.

 

North Star’s kids learn about community service at a young age: when she was in elementary school in 1997, recent West High graduate Esther Perman made sure that Valley of the Moon Park got a new rocket when the old rocket was removed.

 

We are thankful that State Representative Mike Doogan was able to put money in the Fiscal Year 2009 State of Alaska capital budget for the ugrade of the heavily used Valley of the Moon Park and got money to buy snow clearing equipment to clean Anchorage's sidewalks. Good work, Mike! We expect to see some improvements in the summer of 2010.

Working closely with the Spenard Community Council, we are encouraging the Mayor and the Assembly to improve the safety and efficiency of the northern end of Spenard Road.  Former Mayor Mark Begich initiated a project to reconstruct Spenard Road from 30th Avenue (one block south of Benson Boulevard) to the north up to Chester Creek (just north of West 19th Avenue.)

The Spenard Road Safety Improvements project  includes a separated and protected bike trail down Romig Hill between Hillcrest Drive and West 19th Avenue (at the bottom of the hill) and a pedestrian bridge over Chester Creek that will keep bike trail users safely away from the busy road bridge while connecting them to the Chester Creek trail system.  It should be completed by Mid-Summer 2010.

 

The larger road renovation includes wider sidewalks and better pedestrian crosswalks on the portion of the project between Hillcrest Drive south along Spenard to Northern Lights Boulevard, Benson Boulevard and West 30th Avenue. 

 

With the passage of the Road Bond during the April 2009 Municipal election, Romig Hill safety improvements have been funded and reconstruction of  the roadway is under construction at this time.  The utility work and contruction of the gambion wall was completed by the end of the 2009 construction season.  The roadway is scheduled to be closed once again in May of 2010 for the last few months of the project.

The Quick-Tow building was demolished in September of 2009 as part of the road safety improvement project. When it is completed, the realignment of the 27th Avenue and Spenard Road intersection will straighten out the intersection and will provide more parking for the businesses in the area. 

Harriet Drummond, a past North Star Community Council president, was elected to the Assembly in April 2008 and has played a strong role in advocating for neighborhood road safety improvements and for working closely to assure that local businesses are not negatively impacted during or after the construction of improved roads. Thank you, Harriet! 

 

Wow!  We’re busy in this neighborhood!  Notice that many of our successes were the work of a single person.   Without the sanction of the Community Council system, it is unlikely these individuals would have been able to do as much good for the community.