Moose Meat John's Cabin to remain available to Chamber

After months of hammering out a new contract with the Kenai Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Center over operation of the Kenai Bicentennial Visitors Center, the Kenai City Council Wednesday night approved a one-year conditional use permit for the propterty the chamber's old headquartrers is on, next to the visitor center.
Known as the Moose Meat John Cabin, the building was the office of the chamber of commerce  from 1977 until it merged with the convention and visitors bureau in 2012 and moved into the visitors center.
Kenai City Attorney Scott Bloom explained why neither a lease nor a longer-term agreement was made.
“I think the original request maybe potentially was for lease. And the issue with that is, is that this 100 by 100 piece of property is, is part of a bigger contiguous lot. It's the entire lot that the Visitor Center resides on. So it's that entire lot. And we don't have the ability to lease just a portion of alive would constitute an illegal subdivision,” Bloom said. “So we've chosen to move forward with a special use permit. And while code does allow us to issue special use permits for longer than a year, I believe up to five years, we haven't done so in quite a while. And actually in the new land code it's going to limit special use permits to no longer than a year. So we want to keep with that current practice and stay with just one year and that that's why it's being proposed.”
The conditional use permit will span a year, and the chamber will not be charged for use of the property.
The chamber has been allowing the Kenai Historical Society to use the Moose Meat John Cabin during the summer months in conjunction with its Old Town Kenai operations since 2013.
(A previous version of this story incorrectly reported the conditional use permit applied to the cabin, instead of the property it sits on. The Kenai Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Center owns the Moose Meat John Cabin.)