A zoning board overruled its own staff to green-light a Girdwood building

Anchorage's zoning appeals board did something it doesn't do lightly on Thursday: it unanimously overruled its own planning staff. The 7-0 vote granted a Girdwood mixed-use building a variance to push right up against an 8-foot setback — the very thing staff had urged denying, arguing the developer could just shrink or redesign the building to comply.

The board didn't buy it. That setback faces what's really a paved parking lot — a right-of-way with about 12.5 feet of buffer — not a street, so forcing a redesign to honor it struck members as pointless. "I don't think that we can just flippantly say that this would be perfectly fine if you just take that 8-foot chunk out," board member Jason Norris said of the three-commercial, three-residential building.

Norris went further, asking staff to review whether the zone's setback rules are "still serving us well" — a pointed question about whether rules written for ordinary streets are getting in the way of the walkable, mixed-use development the zone is meant to encourage. And a footnote: no one from Girdwood weighed in at all. The community's own board of supervisors didn't comment, and neither did the public.