Husky News

WASILLA: Despite losing the event to Willow, residents say the race is still an economic win.

Wasillans collectively shrugged when Iditarod race officials announced recently that Wasilla, Home of the Iditarod, had lost the race “for the foreseeable future.”

“It’s sad,” said Jane Fosson, a clerk at Hollywood Mart, a rustic cabin grocery at the corner of Hollywood and Vine roads south of Wasilla. “I’d rather see it out here.”

The 1,000-mile sled dog race from Anchorage to Nome begins with a ceremonial start in Anchorage on the first Saturday in March. The timed race starts the next day in Wasilla.

Or so it was for the first 25 years of the Iditarod. For the last 10 years, Willow has hosted the restart six times and Wasilla only three. Once, in pursuit of snow, it was moved to Fairbanks.

Iditarod Trail Committee staff announced Jan. 8 that Willow is the default spot from now on. A perennial lack of snow is one reason for the move, but exponential growth between Wasilla and the first in-race checkpoint at Knik is the real killer.

“Willow is the very best possible staging place for a restart that we have available to us now, on a sustainable basis,” Iditarod Trail Committee spokesman Chas St. George said.

But Wasilla gets to keep the title, he said. That’s where the trail committee headquarters is, where the Iditarod Days Festival takes place prior to the race, where the mother and father of the Iditarod, Dorothy Page and Joe Redington Sr., are memorialized. That won’t change, he said.

“One day doesn’t make a year,” St. George said. “Wasilla is the Home of the Iditarod. We are here. We’re not planning on going anywhere.”

Cheryl Metiva, executive director of the Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber has been using the theme “Home of the Iditarod 365 days a year” for a few years now.

“The Iditarod brings us year-round tourism,” Metiva said. “Even when the restart moves to Willow, the economic activity it brings to our community is tremendous. Certainly we feel the emotional disappointment, but it’s OK.”

The restart, even in Willow, brings in as much as $1.3 million to the city from an influx of restart-goers using Wasilla restaurants, gas stations and hotels.

The Iditarod Days Festival, the chamber’s biggest fundraiser, has grown in recent years too, she said.

But the bigger draw happens throughout the year. Tourists in chartered buses and couples in motor homes don’t care whether the race starts here or in Willow, she said.

“All they know is that this is where they’re going to go and see, feel and touch that amazing race,” Metiva said. “It matters to us locally, but outside this community, the average person doesn’t even care.”

That’s the catch. Locals are the ones who say “Home of the Iditarod” like it’s an inside joke.

ROADS TO CROSS

Fosson, at Hollywood Mart, is an old-timer by Knik Goose-Bay Road standards, having lived there for 10 years. Like many of her neighbors, she has fond memories of picnicking with friends and neighbors at Knik Lake, watching mushers bound for Nome on race days past.

It’s sad to see that tradition go by the wayside, she said. But the area needs development too.

For years, the Knik-Fairview community has been the hottest growth spot in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, growing by 10 percent in 2005 alone.

Dozens of driveways to new duplexes and subdivisions cross the trail mushers would use between Wasilla and Knik. Racing there would mean rounding up volunteers to monitor traffic at each, a logistical nightmare.

Ryan Redington, grandson of Joe and winner of the recent Knik 200 sled dog race from Knik to Skwentna, said he’s never run the Iditarod leg from Wasilla to Knik that passes by his family’s land.

A four-time Iditarod competitor, he happened to sit the race out with a young team in 2002, the last time Wasilla hosted the restart.

“Willow’s easier for a musher, but it’s sad to see it not go though Knik,” Redington said. “But it’s hard to do when we’ve got so many driveways.”

SLOW DAY FOR BUSINESS

Ray Redington Jr. said he understands why the race is in Willow. But if his grandfather had known the restart would eventually be there, “the Redington family probably wouldn’t be in Knik,” he said.

“I think we’d all like to see it come through Knik, if it’s possible,” he said. “Most of all, we’re just happy we have the race. I think we’d drive to Fairbanks in a minute if Iditarod said we had to go there.”

At Iditacup, a drive-up espresso spot at the corner of Knik-Goose Bay and Vine roads, barista Marissa Breeden pulled out a 1999 Daily News photo of dressed-for-cold Iditarod watchers getting caffeinated at the drive-up window while waiting for the next musher to go sliding by.

People used to park in their parking lot and line up to watch the mushers pass, Breeden said. She’s been working there six years. She hasn’t seen it.

“Now, it’s usually kind of slow that day,” Breeden said.

Source:The Anchorage Daily News