OPINION: Anchorage needs a responsive development code, not a patchwork

A proposed municipal ordinance focused on simplifying zoning, AO 2023-66, aims to revise and streamline the residential development portions of Title 21 while removing many of the current roadblocks to development by creating a more uniform code and increasing the type of housing allowable across the Municipality.

For decades, the development community has been crying, “Anchorage is running out of land,” and this gets truer by the day. With few developable large tracts left, the future of land development in Anchorage will be infill on vacant or underdeveloped parcels and redevelopment of existing lots.

Without meaningful public investment in infrastructure, such as expanding Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility’s sewer and water network, and creating a stormwater utility, these costs fall to the development community. What can be achieved on paper without a lot of additional expense, to either the Municipality or the development community, is opening up the residential development code to more possibilities.

At its core, zoning is arbitrary. Every change to the zoning code, including the city of Anchorage’s original zoning ordinance in 1946, which was passed as an emergency declaration, has been a patch rather than a repair, which is one reason why we currently have 15 different residential zones. Anchorage zoning code has always been applied to retroactively fit and fix existing situations rather than performing its purpose of supporting responsible development and realizing the vision of the various municipal plans.

As John Weddleton pointed out in his commentary (ADN, July 7), the 2020 Comprehensive Plan (written more than two decades ago in 2000) and the 2040 Land Use Plan (adopted in 2017) provide guidance, but these plans do not require Title 21 to be as cumbersome as it is and AO 2023-66 will revise the code while supporting these approved plans.

Weddleton also missed a big takeaway from the Municipal Housing white paper he mentioned. The report called out lot size reform (aligning lot size minimums with target densities under the existing code and reducing lot size minimums for lots served by AWWU) and targeted rezones (reducing the cost to landowners of upzoning their property). AO 2023-66 will do all of this.

Weddleton contends that the plans are working. My rhetorical question is: For whom? The 2012 Anchorage Housing Market Analysis commented on the then-coming “housing crisis” and identified many of the same reforms proposed, reforms which were not addressed in the most recent rewrite of Title 21, approved a full five years after the analysis. And new residential construction has been slowly declining.

Most of our residential zones are already based on the size of the lot. AO 2023-66 flips the idea with the proposed use dictating the lot size. As written, the proposed ordinance will place R-1 through R-5 in the R zoning district and R-6 through R-10 in the R-OUS zoning district.

Rezoning and spot zoning for residential will no longer be an issue. If a residential use is allowed and the lot is large enough a project will be allowed by right, rather than having to be reviewed and approved by a full board with a turnaround time of three to six months.

Contrary to Weddleton’s assertion that the code is too complicated to clean up in 18 months, the majority of the code would still apply as written. The current use tables would need to be rearranged to show the lot size necessary for each use rather than what zone the proposed use will fit into.

Additional changes that should be included are: allowing multiple dwelling units, attached or detached, on a single lot with an administrative site plan review and potentially more units with a public site plan review; expanding where Unit Lot Subdivisions can be developed; removing the minimum lot size while retaining setback, height and yard requirements; and revisiting landscaping requirements for residential projects.

Some uses will still require public review and the revised code will address that, such as requiring a public process when adding more than four dwelling units to a single lot and restricting the size of a residential development based on the existing surroundings. This will prevent the absurd suggestion of a 12-plex being built in a primarily single-family neighborhood.

The Assembly’s removal of parking minimums, its creation of a pre-approved house plan bank, and the expansion of the accessory dwelling unit (ADU) possibilities are all positive steps toward more housing. AO 2023-66 is an equally bold move forward and exactly the change needed to meet Anchorage’s housing crisis.

Jonathan Lang is a professional land surveyor with more than 30 years of experience with land development in Southcentral Alaska. Jon has served on the Municipality’s Zoning Board of Examiners and Appeals and was an adjunct professor in the Geomatics Department in the School of Engineering at the University of Alaska Anchorage for more than 20 years.

The views expressed here are the writer’s and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.