Beautification has been sneaking up on Anchorage over the last decade. There's a law now banning new signs that are too tall, big and cluttery. New roads come with sidewalks and trails. Mega-stores must pay more attention to design details.

Anchorage developers have accepted all of that.

But now the Anchorage Assembly is considering another slew of changes that some worry may cost too much.

Rules for landscaping, parking, walkways and storage, mostly on industrial and commercial property and multi-family housing sites, are up for consideration at tonight's Assembly meeting. The proposed landscaping standards are part of a bigger rewrite of Anchorage's zoning code that the Assembly is approving a piece at a time.

Better landscaping can make up for a lot of otherwise drab or bland development and entice people to get out of their cars, say those who want builders to put in more and bigger trees and shrubs.

But should a developer have to make a parking lot bigger and run up costs to put trees and shrubs inside the lot to make it prettier?

Jim Fergusson, a construction management company owner who speaks for the trade group Associated General Contractors on the issue, thinks not.

"If parking lots are the same size (under the proposed new code) with fewer spaces and a little more landscaping, that would be acceptable," he said. "But when there are fewer spaces and the lot is bigger, that's wrong."

City planners propose cutting back parking in the new code because a study determined the city requires more parking spaces than are needed. But new landscaping and other requirements will take up more space.

All along, a reduction in parking space requirements has been touted as a benefit for developers that will save them money and at least in part make up for new rules for additional landscaping, walkways and dedicated snow storage space.

That's the theory.

But it's not clear that it will always pan out.

The new rules call for more trees and encourage fluffier, taller ones. Developers would have to build a sidewalk between the building and the adjacent street -- something that's not required now.

They'd have to put 15 feet of trees or shrubs and trees along the edge of a property instead of 10. They'd have to build landscaped areas inside parking lots more often. They'd get bonus points for keeping old trees.

Take a look at the Orthopedic Physicians Anchorage building at 38th Avenue and Lake Otis Parkway to get an idea what the new code might do. Its landscaping goes beyond what's required today, planners say.

The building is set right next to Lake Otis, with a sidewalk in front, so a person could easily walk from the nearby bus stop to the front door. Many, perhaps most, existing Anchorage buildings don't have that sidewalk-to-door feature.

The mass of greenery within the parking lot is clearly more than today's rules demand, says city planner Dave Tremont. Lush, mature evergreens and other trees and shrubs line the parking lot adjacent to Lake Otis.

For an example of a problem the planners want to fix, check out a storage unit building on Florina Street, behind the East Tudor Road mall with the Thai Kitchen restaurant in it. The building may have the required 10 feet of landscaping between commercial property and the apartments nearby, but, "to me, they weren't screening or buffering the building very much," said city planner Tom Davis. Fifteen feet of greenery, with more trees, would be required under the proposed new code.

Those are examples illustrating what planners hope to accomplish.

Fergusson, representing Associated General Contractors, cites another development, The Bicycle Shop at 1801 W. Dimond Blvd., as an example of planning gone awry.

If The Bicycle Shop kept its same commercial zoning and were built under the proposed new rules with additional landscaping, snow storage and walkways, the land required for the building would increase by 16 percent, Fergusson notes.

And to boot, it would have room for one less parking space.

"We need to keep the city as compact as we can," says Fergusson. "None of us want bigger parking lots than we need."

City planner Tom Davis says Fergusson reviewed the worst case of four scenarios for The Bicycle Shop. First, the shop's existing site is already bigger than is required under the existing code, or would be under the proposed code, he said.

"The proposed code does raise the minimum bar for quality of development," said Davis. "However, many developments around town seem to already exceed these minimum expectations," such as the Orthopedic Physicians Anchorage building, and the Afognak Building on Arctic Boulevard and West 40th Avenue.

Second, if the landowner took advantage of a reduced parking requirement, the land needed for The Bicycle Shop would increase by only 6 percent rather than 16 percent, Davis said.

Architect Daphne Brown of Kumin Associates architecture firm is critical of other aspects of the Title 21 rewrite, such as proposals to regulate design of commercial buildings. She said proposed commercial design standards, in which designers must pick building features from menus, are too much like painting by numbers.

Brown is OK with the proposed landscaping rules, however.

"If you drive around town where there is a lot of landscaping, it mitigates a lot of problems with parking lots," she says.

There are practical reasons for more landscaping, she says. One is that greenery absorbs water that would simply run off pavement.

Assembly members Dan Coffey and Debbie Ossiander, who are in the thick of the landscaping discussion, are concerned about costs.

Ossiander is considering scaling back the proposed landscaping required between two commercial properties to make it less expensive.

"I don't think we've adequately analyzed the costs," said Coffey, who chairs the Assembly committee on new zoning laws. Most recently, the city has analyzed only how the proposals would affect the size of lots needed for a sampling of properties. It has not put a price tag on the changes.

And before the Assembly finally signs off on the entire zoning and land use code -- at some future meeting -- that look at costs has to take place, Coffey says.

Tonight's discussion on landscaping rules could be delayed due to other business on the Assembly's agenda.

Find Rosemary Shinohara online at adn.com/contact/rshinohara or call her at 257-4340.

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