A dazzling sunny, warm day drew crowds to the Eagle River Nature Center on a recent weekend.

Cars overflowed the parking lot, lining up tailgate to bumper along the narrow, two-lane Eagle River Road. Exhausted backpackers sprawled on picnic tables, dogs panting at their side. A naturalist with a spotting scope answered questions from myriad of visitors: young and old; residents, Lower 48'ers and foreigners; mountaineers and weekend strollers.

As one summer weekend shows, this scenic slice of the Eagle River Valley draws plenty of people.

But supporters say the small, aging facilities at the nature center are no longer able to handle all that love.

Now they are moving ahead with plans to give the center new digs, a new road and new trails as early as 2013.

Master plan released to public

Once someone's home and then a bar,- the log structure that houses the visitor center is bursting at its chinks. Nature center staff point to inadequate bathrooms, classroom space, maintenance facilities and storage.

For the past year, Friends of the Eagle River Nature Center, working with Alaska State Parks, has been developing a master plan for a new facility. The nonprofit Friends group manages the nature center.

The final master site development plan was released at the beginning of July, following public forums and a comment process.

Asta Spurgis, the nature center's executive director, emphasized that the plan is "preliminary" and "pre-development."

Operating and financial agreements with the state parks division need to be developed. Funding needs to be secured. Permits need to put in place. And a slew of studies have yet to be done: environmental, architectural and engineering, to name a few.

"We know later on down the road we'll be examining 'What is that going to cost to build? What is that going to cost to run?'" Spurgis said.

Nuts and bolts

The plan places a new nature center below the bluff where the existing nature center is located. A road would snake down to it from an entrance a few hundred feet before the current parking area.

The new facility is slated to be between 5,200 square feet and 9,800 square feet, depending on what will ultimately be included. The lower-end estimate would equate to a facility twice as large as the existing nature center.

The vision for the new facility includes an interpretative area, a lounge with a wood stove, classrooms and a multi-purpose auditorium. A food-service area and living space for resident volunteers are hoped-for extras.

Trails compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act would leave from the nature center. The Rodak Trail would be reworked to allow for loops of varying lengths.

The cost estimates for a new nature center range from $5 million to $10 million, said Bill Evans, a state landscape architect who has played a leading role in the project.

Separate parking lots would be built for nature center users and trail users. There is also an overflow parking lot in the plans, which could be built if it becomes necessary.

The current nature center parking area would become a roundabout.

Nearby, a maintenance area would include a 2,500-square-foot unheated equipment storage building and an 800-square-foot workshop. Additionally, there would be a fenced area for lumber and materials storage.

The combined new facilities would cover 9.5 acres, scaled down from 22 acres.

The fate of the current nature center building remains unknown. That will ultimately be up to state parks, which owns the building.

Neighbor's concerns

In public comments and forums held throughout the year about the nature center's plans, some neighbors voiced concerns.

Richard Baranow owns a parcel adjacent to the nature center where he not only lives, but also rents out cabins on a long-term basis.

"I'm caught between a rock and a hard place. I want to support them, but I don't really think they're listening to what people have to say," Baranow said.

He believes plans should be scaled back and he questions the idea of placing a facility so close to a river with known bear incidents.

"The real beauty of Chugach State Park is beyond the nature center (and) will be impacted by new buildings and new road systems," Baranow said.

The 'hopeline'

The timeline for building a new nature center is, in Spurgis' words, more of a "hopeline."

First, Friends of the Eagle River Nature Center and State Parks need to reach consensus about each organization's responsibilities – both operationally and monetarily.

Spurgis said that annual operating costs are estimated at 10 percent of construction costs. So if a $10 million facility is built, then about $1 million would be needed annually to run it.

Once agreements are in place, the next step would be seeking funds to do an economic feasibility study and hire an architect and engineer.

The money to develop the nature center master plan came from a federal Housing and Urban Development grant, secured with the help of U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski. The term for that grant ends at the close of this year.

If the nature center can "eke some of these things out" in 2011, Spurgis said, then by 2012 engineering studies and drawings could be done. This would coincide with a campaign to raise capital funds.

That would put the date for breaking ground in 2013.

But "things always go slower than you imagine," Spurgis said.

This article published in The Alaska Star on Wednesday, July 28, 2010.