The Kenai City Council on Wednesday, Dec. 3 adopted a resolution to purchase the property under Wildwood Drive and Cook Inlet Drive rights-of-way to construct and maintain an outfall sewer and access road.
Resolution 2025-67 states the city will ask to buy the property from the Kenai Native Association for $200,000 plus any necessary closing costs. The last estimate in 2011 put the market value estimate at $395,000.
The City of Kenai authorized $1,200,000 for the Wildwood Drive Rehabilitation Project in the 2026 budget. City manager Terry Eubank said last Wednesday that Wildwood Drive has needed maintenance for a long time, and estimated the asphalt to be around 50 years old.
“We put a significant amount of wrap and mix on it every year trying to just to keep it to be passable,” he said.
The Alaska Native Settlement Claims Act deeded the land underneath Wildwood Drive to the Kenai Native Association, but Eubank said the responsibility of maintaining the road has primarily fallen on the city.
“We’ve always plowed it; we’ve always grated it; we’ve always fixed the potholes the best we can,” he said.
He added that while the road does serve citizens of Kenai, Eubank said it primarily serves the state-owned Wildwood Correctional Facility, which is outside city limits. A few years ago, data received by the city from the Department of Transportation showed 80% of the traffic traversing down Wildwood Drive was related to the prison.
Eubank said the state is aware of this, and the city is collaborating with the Alaska Department of Transportation to finalize design plans. He said DOT is looking to incorporate Wildwood Drive with phase two of the Kenai Spur Highway rehabilitation project, and he’s hoping Wildwood Drive is repaved by the end of next summer.
Neither the state nor the city can move forward with the project until they secure the right-of-way.
Council member Bridget Grieme asked what it would cost the city to fix Wildwood Drive without any financial assistance from DOT. Eubank estimated it would cost anywhere from $600,000-700,000.
“So to make sure I understand — essentially, we would be buying the rights for $200,000 in exchange for the state doing $600,000 [worth of work] for us,” she said. “So we would be $400,000 ahead.”
When council member Glenese Pettey asked Eubank how confident he was that KNA would accept the offer, he said he’s “very confident,” saying he had already presented the quitclaim deed to KNA.
“I’m definitely in support of this,” council member Phil Daniel said. “This has been a longstanding project that we’ve been trying to get done for a long time.”
The resolution passed unanimously.
The full Dec. 3 meeting of the Kenai City Council can be viewed on the City of Kenai Youtube channel.
