Anchorage Assembly indefinitely postpones plan change raising transit-corridor density

Midtown Assembly Member Erin Baldwin Day moved to postpone indefinitely her own ordinance amending Anchorage's long-range land use plans, and the Assembly agreed 12-0 at its Oct. 6 meeting.

The ordinance would have raised the minimum average housing density in transit-supportive corridors from 8 dwelling units per acre to 36. It would have amended the Anchorage 2020 Comprehensive Plan and the 2040 Land Use Plan, which guide how land across the Anchorage Bowl may be zoned.

Baldwin Day told the Assembly she had mistakenly believed the plan changes needed to move together with the missing middle housing overlay. She said the scaled-down version of the overlay no longer requires them, so the ordinance was unnecessary.

The overlay is a separate ordinance. It refines the 2025 Transit Supportive Development Overlay proposal, which received public comment and a recommendation for approval with amendments from the Planning and Zoning Commission, according to the municipal housing page. The Assembly continued its hearing on the overlay to Oct. 6 after divided testimony in September, and that hearing followed the vote on the plan amendment.

In written testimony submitted Oct. 4, resident David Wigglesworth had asked the Assembly to postpone the plan amendment. He said action should wait until the Planning Department finishes its review of both plans, followed by Planning and Zoning Commission hearings and recommendations to the Assembly.

He said the ordinance "effectively functions as a de facto rewrite of Section 2 of the LUP," the part of the 2040 plan that sets land use designations. He said it would set a blanket density of 36 units per acre or more across most designations the overlay touches, stretch transit corridors to as much as a half-mile, or a 5- to 15-minute bike ride, from a transit route, and drop corridor studies the plans called for.

"This entire process makes a mockery of community planning," Wigglesworth wrote.

Baldwin Day's memorandum on the measure said the overlay fits the high-level goals of both plans, but the plans needed updates to reflect current planning practice and conditions and to recognize the overlay as a zoning tool.

The Planning Department's review of the 2020 and 2040 plans is still underway. Municipal code calls for that review at least every 10 years.