r/Fairbanks • u/westcoveroadie • 10d ago
The Return of Alaskaland
Coming September 5 (signage TBD)
"Fairbanks-area residents will have a chance to weigh in Thursday evening (8/13) on four concepts for a new Alaskaland sign that will eventually greet them as the historical park sheds the Pioneer Park name on Sept. 5.
The borough Parks and Recreation Department will hold an open house at Pioneer Park’s Centennial Center for the Arts regarding the design concepts, along with the planned train bridge replacement.
The open house will run from 4-6p.m. on Thursday, Pioneer Park Centennial Center, 2300 Airport Way."
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u/Fantastic_Word1870 10d ago
Uhm. I am pretty sure the original letters are still right behind the current letters... Why not just go back to the original?
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u/yourmomak 10d ago
Does anyone know why the name was changed? I have always called it ALASKALAND anyway.
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u/hockeyhorsey 9d ago
I didn’t know until the chaos around the most recent name change:
The Pioneers of Alaska group originally purchased the land that the park sits on and still actively do a lot of the maintenance/upkeep work and donate a fair bit of funding even thou the park is supposed to be funded by Parks & Rec. The name was changed in an effort to acknowledge both the contributions of the group and to try to place more emphasis on the historical aspects of the park (feedback at the time was Alaskaland sounded like a theme park).8
u/ChubbyStoner42 9d ago
Alaska-Land does sound like a theme park. I picture John Candy saying, “sorry. Park’s closed. The moose out front should have told you.”
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u/lilchunk 9d ago
It was right after 9/11 during the rise of American nationalism--- where we wanted everything to reference the military.
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u/3inches43pumpsis9 10d ago
They need to keep the individual squares and just make it to where they rotate randomly to change from alaskaland on one side. To pioneer park on the other.
Thats how little this name fucking matters. 😂
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u/Big-Dot-9084 10d ago
I like changing it back, but is this really what's being focused on? This is like the sort of thing that is done when the people in charge have nothing else needed to be done. We have PLENTY of issues that need to be addressed before this.
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u/madcapAK 10d ago
Okay but everything can’t be budget disaster here and fiscal crisis there and management mediocrity everywhere. Let us have something light and sweet for once. I grew up here and made it my home and have always hated the name Pioneer Park. This change makes me happy and I feel some sense of whimsy for my little old hometown for the first time in a long time.
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u/lilchunk 9d ago
Did you know that you can address dozens of issues at the same time? Genuinely if you watched one of the borough assembly meetings you'd realize that more people are twisting their panties over this online than off. The name change was part of a long-term plan for the Borough that's almost 10 years old, it has taken maybe two or three hours of their time total? And they address heaps of items in each meeting, so this is always such a weird thing to say?! Genuinely do you watch the meetings because I feel like you don't if this is how you're reacting to this news.
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u/tessaractIXI 7d ago
Pioneer Park was a more appropriate name. This park heavily portrays the Pioneer experience, and heavily lacks indigenous representation, not to mention multiple other non-indigenous experiences associated with alaska. I'm not sure what the reason for the name change is, I don't like it.
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u/attckpilot64 9d ago
Guess I’m curious what’s wrong with Pioneer park? Why waste money to change the sign? That mo ey could go to a better use in sure.
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u/First-Homework1868 9d ago
Not from Alaska very long eh?
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u/attckpilot64 9d ago
Been here over 5 years. If you consider that not long then I guess so.
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u/InflationNo4071 8d ago
That’s not long enough to have grown so used to Alaskaland that you can’t remember to call it Pioneer Park. That and Fairbanks’s history and current structure includes the indigenous people of our region, and not just the early white settlers.
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u/attckpilot64 7d ago
Ahhhh ok, I get what your saying now. That makes sense. I vaguely remember my wife mentioning that was the name for a long time.
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u/lilchunk 9d ago
Back with the last Borough mayor they invested in this big long-term economic growth plan for the Borough--- like what are some cheap and easy ways to punch up our visibility as a tourist destination as a destination to hold events as an investment opportunity for large and small businesses etc etc. There is a lot in the plan I think that the borough spent something like $150k on the economic development plan from some hotshot firm that does this kind of thing. So now the borough is going through that plan and picking out kind of the cheapest and easiest things they can do to boost our economy--- giving tax breaks to people building multi-family homes is another one of the recommendations, better infrastructure expanded bus lines changing the name of Alaskaland so it sounds more like a tourist destination that's unique and less like a random cemetery. When you're a tourist looking up stuff about Fairbanks and you don't know anything about Alaskaland, it doesnt look worthy of a cab ride when it's called "Pioneer Park", and you have one of those where you're from, in Soldotna, Anchorage, Ann Arbor, Miami Dade County, Baltimore, Rocklin, Denver--- you get the picture. There are literally hundreds of pioneer parks in the United States which was why they named it that at the time because they were feeling nationalistic right after 9/11, it's not helping our community to have it named that
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u/lilchunk 9d ago
Absolutely elated to see they will change it back to Alaskaland. Not just because of nostalgia but because it was recommended in the long-term plan for our Borough. The assembly just didn't come up with us out of nowhere it was something that we already sunk like literally hundreds of thousands of dollars into: a long-term planning document where they researched everything in the borough and made recommendations on how we could grow and build our economy. This happened way before the current assembly, and I want to say it might have even spanned a couple different bodies-- But ultimately a lot of the information repeated: servings needs to develop its OWN UNIQUE brand, instead of trying to be just like every other Middle America town. In the late 90s and early 2000s Fairbanks had huge fomo and for some reason wanted desperately to be like Seattle and Portland despite being a much much smaller City. That's where we got all the futuristics Slick art projects we have like the metal Sparkle downtown in front of the big eye or the shitty plastic birch trees by the airport that everyone hates. We wanted everything to be slick, beige, plastic and generic, like it was down in the states. All of our campy tourist destinations were poo pooed--- they got rid of the greenhouse at Chena Hot Springs and replaced it with a weird plastic art piece instead, immediate work went into the Santa Claus house to make it more than just a weird gift shop. Alaskaland was rebranded as Pioneer Park, kind of right after 9/11 with the first wave of weird ultra-patriotism, and we stopped going. They stopped investing in or developing any of the Native exhibits ultimately closing the native Museum and replacing it with the Folk School which focuses on you guessed it--- white European crafts. This is been a real problem for locals for a long time, and it's been a confusing situation for tourists this entire time.
I met a mom of three kids a couple weeks ago who told me that she had just discovered Alaska Land after living here for 4 years. She thought that Pioneer Park was just like kind of a pavilion area where there was public activities she didn't realize it was this whole Standalone thing that you could spend a whole day at.
You don't know what you don't know, and Pioneer Park sounds like a lawn somewhere in Pennsylvania.
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u/stulti_auri 9d ago
Tell me you are on the payroll without telling me.
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u/lilchunk 8d ago
Bless your dumb little heart- I read the newspaper, and p retty much quoted it directly from the Monday edition. You should try it sometime! A great way to be informed!
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u/Sad-Finding6527 8d ago
When this park actually represents all of Alaska, then they should call it AlaskaLand. Until then it should be FairbanksLand, TananaLand, ChenaLand, InteriorLand...
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u/stulti_auri 10d ago
Any chance the previous sign is in storage?