adn.com | alaska : Bridge would help Young's son-in-law: "KNIK ARM: Art Nelson, four partners hold 60 acres of bluff land on Point MacKenzie side. | By RICHARD MAUER | Anchorage Daily News | (Published: December 18, 2005)
To state Board of Fisheries chairman Art Nelson, Don Young's Way, the proposed Knik Arm crossing named after his father-in-law, is hardly a bridge to nowhere.
For Nelson and his well-connected partners in Point Bluff LLC, Rep. Don Young's span is in fact a bridge to somewhere: their 60 acres of unobstructed view property on the Point MacKenzie side of Cook Inlet. The land sits directly across from Elmendorf Air Force Base, north of the Anchorage port and downtown.
"It's beautiful property," Nelson said.
If a road were built to the land today, it would require about a two-hour commute to downtown Anchorage. But a bridge would change everything. Don Young's Way would mean a shorter drive to downtown than from the Anchorage Hillside -- and make the land much more valuable.
The five-member Point Bluff partnership, of which Nelson has a 10 percent share, was created in December 2002. That was a year before the first, unsuccessful version of Young's highway bill surfaced with money for the bridge. ...
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But speculators on Point MacKenzie and Gravina Island had reason to cheer last summer when Congress passed Young's transportation bill. It earmarked $229 million for the Knik Arm bridge and $223 million for the Gravina Island bridge.
Critics and satirists ridiculed the spans as the bridges to nowhere, but the projects didn't get into real trouble until Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. Young and Stevens resisted calls to return the money to help fund reconstruction, though they were eventually forced to give up the earmarks, leaving the Alaska Legislature to decide how to spend the combined $452 million.
On Friday, Gov. Frank Murkowski proposed spending a total of $185 million on both bridges, the most he could under federal-state spending formulas ...
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