Better cellphone service is finally coming to Kincaid Park in Anchorage

A cellphone tower disguised as a spruce tree will soon be built in Anchorage's Kincaid Park, a long-awaited bid to boost service for a popular recreation area notorious for dead zones and dropped calls.

In a 7-2 vote Tuesday night, with two members absent, the Anchorage Assembly authorized GCI Inc. to build a 65-foot tower on a knoll overlooking the soccer stadium at the end of Raspberry Road. Up to three cellphone providers can put their antennas on the same tower.

Officials say the new tower, the first of its kind for Kincaid Park, will allow skiers, mountain bikers, runners, frisbee golfers and others to make 911 calls from almost anywhere in the park, as well as the beach and low-lying areas. The park is 15,000 acres of rolling hills, trails and woods just southwest of Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.

The project is a risky investment for GCI. But officials with the Anchorage-based corporation said it's not about the money.

"The finance guys said, 'This doesn't meet a single parameter,' " GCI lawyer Mark Moderow said in an interview after Tuesday's meeting. "But the bottom line is … our (chief fiscal officer) has little kids in the ski programs. My kids, they grew up and raced down here. I raced out there. We've gone to funerals out there.

"It's a big facility, and it really needs the coverage," he said.  

Moderow said the project will cost GCI roughly $800,000. He said the company hopes to finish the tower by the start of this year's ski season.

Under city law, voters are supposed to approve leases on parkland, a fact pointed out by Assemblyman John Weddleton at Tuesday night's meeting. But the city real estate department crafted an agreement with GCI for a permit, not a lease, that the city can effectively withdraw at any time. The Assembly also decided the agreement, generating revenue of roughly $10,000 a year, didn't qualify as a "substantial" land interest for the city.

Worries about safety and emergency response have spurred calls from Anchorage police and fire officials, along with park users, for better cellphone coverage in Kincaid for years. At Tuesday's meeting, Assemblyman Bill Evans noted that he has no signal when he visits the Kincaid motocross park, where there's fast motorcycle racing and the chance of crashes and injuries.  

Assistant Anchorage fire chief Alex Boyd said there have been instances of 911 callers walking a long way to get a signal for help. It's also more difficult for emergency responders to locate callers within the park, he said.

The gap in coverage also can belabor communication for first responders. At times, the fire department has had to station an extra person in the park to relay radio calls, Boyd said.

In 2014, AT&T announced plans to build a cellphone tower, but the project never moved forward. Moderow suggested that the financial uncertainty is a big reason a tower hasn't yet been built.

Temporary cell equipment and towers has been carted into Kincaid, but only with limited service.

The GCI plans call for the installation of a fiberoptic cable underground from the corner of Jodhpur and Kincaid Road to the area of the Kincaid chalet, which would also pave the way for wireless internet in the park. City officials say the location of the tower itself will have little interaction with park users or park plans.  

The Kincaid tower will be disguised as a spruce tree, Moderow said. This is only the third "camouflage" tower to be authorized in the Anchorage area. Within the past year, Verizon Wireless built one such tower in Girdwood near Alyeska Resort, and GCI built one in Eagle River.

Ubiquitous across the Lower 48 — in Arizona, some cellphone towers are disguised as cactuses — telecommunications companies have been reluctant to introduce the technology in Alaska, citing worries about maintenance. But Moderow said his company is now more confident in the way that the "camouflage" towers are engineered.

There was some Assembly discussion Tuesday night about whether the GCI proposal needed to go to a public vote. Anchorage charter — the city's constitution — says leases on parkland need to be approved by voters. Weddleton and Assemblyman Patrick Flynn voted against GCI's proposal. They said they supported the plan to put a cellphone tower in Kincaid but the agreement violated the spirit of what was set out in the charter.

But a memo from city attorney Bill Falsey said the Kincaid tower was a permit, not a lease, and was designed to accommodate city law. A permit can be revoked without cause with only 30 days written notice, according to the memo, and will only last for a year, with the option to extend for up to three one-year intervals.

The city also determined that the permit did not affect land with "substantial" value, defined by past ordinances as $50,000 or more. GCI and its wholly owned subsidiary, Alaska Wireless Network, have agreed to pay $850 per month to the city for the permit, or less than $10,000 per year. The company will have to renegotiate the terms at the end of all the extension options, Moderow said.

"There is an immediate public safety issue in Kincaid," Evans said. He later added: "If we need to fix any kind of code or charter provisions, we can do so afterwards."

In May, the Sand Lake Community Council voted unanimously to support the proposal.

"Alaskans are very protective of our parks. We're outside a lot — but we also want to have technology accessible to us," said Jason Grenn, the president of Sand Lake Community Council. "It's a good blending of the two things, being safe in the wilderness but also making it look like we're in the wilderness, and not thinking we're in a city."

Grenn said he's had spills while riding his mountain bike in the park. None have been emergencies, and Grenn said he feels lucky he hasn't needed boosted service.