The existing land use regulations are more than 30 years old and woefully outdated. At the time these regulations were written, Anchorage was much smaller with lots of undeveloped land. Now a much larger, urban Anchorage faces a significant land shortage.
The final chapter of the draft revised regulations is scheduled for a vote of provisional approval by the Municipal Assembly by the end of March. That means the new regulations would be accepted as written, but not go into effect until after further review.
The new regulations are designed for future development to meet the Anchorage 2020 - Anchorage Bowl Comprehensive Plan. But the draft regulations are a dramatic change from the existing regulations and have been strongly criticized by some commercial real estate owners, developers and other professionals.
The core of the problem is that meeting the requirements of the Comprehensive Plan requires more stringent control of development and land use than the current regulations, which are relatively simple and very broad with regard to land use. This runs smack into the economics and development practices that have evolved over the years under the current regulations.
Recently the Anchorage chapter of the Building and Managers Association (BOMA), a highly respected international commercial real estate trade association, said the draft plan is so flawed that it should be scrapped altogether and started over.
They believe the draft regulations, as written, would change zoning, lower property values, violate property rights, greatly increase bureaucratic review and control, and discourage economic development. They feel the plan is poorly written, subjective and unclear. Go to http://www.bomaanchorage.com/to see their concerns.
The Municipal planning staff says BOMA is simply wrong in its understanding of the draft rewrite and welcomes their input. Go to http://www.muni.org/Departments/Planning/Projects/t21/Pages/Title21Rewrite.aspx to see the draft plan.
One of the most contentious issues is whether or not the draft plan changes zoning. The current code has a feature where uses are allowed both as specified by the zone and as allowed in higher zones. For example, Light Industrial zone (I1) property can also be used for Strip Development (B3). The new Target store on C Street in south Anchorage is on industrial zoned land although the Target store is a B3 use.
The draft rewrite eliminates this feature for industrial zoned property. This means industrial zoned property can only be used for industrial use and not B3 uses. While the new draft plan does not change zoning, it will limit the uses for industrial property.
This is a huge change and in some cases will have a major impact on property values. Take the land around the new Target store at C Street in south Anchorage that is zoned industrial. The Target store makes the surrounding land suitable for retail and worth much more than for industrial use.
Some, like BOMA, feel that the rewrite is overly ambitious, trying to do too much all at once. Others feel Anchorage needs a plan for an urban city and needs to make the all necessary changes now. Still others feel we should take an incremental approach, fixing the problems in the current plan.
Melding all these issues into new regulations that meet everyone's approval is impossible. But it is very disappointing to have such serious criticism of the plan by an organization as credible as BOMA, especially at this late date, after years of hard work. If only half of their concerns are correct, then we need to step back and reconsider before passing the current draft regulations, provisionally or not.
Chris Stephens, CCIM, is a local associate broker specializing in commercial and investment real estate. His opinion column appears monthly in the Anchorage Daily News.
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