Anchorage Assembly takes up rezone for 44 townhomes sitting on land zoned for shops

The Anchorage Assembly on Nov. 4 takes up a fix for 44 East Anchorage townhomes that sit on land zoned for small shops and offices.

The townhomes, at the corner of Tudor Road and Patterson Street, are in a neighborhood business district, where the city's land use code doesn't allow multifamily homes like them. Their condominium association asked the city to rezone the roughly 6.5 acres for housing. "The intent of this rezone is to align our existing use" with city code and Anchorage's comprehensive plan, the association wrote in its application.

Nothing would change on the ground. "This site is fully developed," the association wrote.

The current zoning is meant for small retail, office and service businesses that serve the surrounding neighborhood, though homes are allowed on upper floors. The new zoning, mixed residential, allows single-family homes, duplexes and apartments at 5 to 30 homes per acre. The townhomes work out to about 6.75 per acre, according to the association.

City planners and the Planning and Zoning Commission support the change. The commission's resolution says the Planning Department "did not receive any comments in opposition."

The department's own file shows one. Of the 476 hearing notices the city mailed, one came back from a family trust with an address on Apollo Drive, in the single-family neighborhood west of the townhomes, with a handwritten note: "I am against the Re-Zoning." It gives no reason. A second notice, returned by a townhome resident after the packet was finished, supports the change.

Planners say the new zoning matches the city's long-range plan for compact, medium-density housing at the site and would serve as a transition between the single-family homes to the west and the business zoning nearby.

The townhomes share the intersection with a Southcentral Foundation property that has been held to a 25-foot height limit since 1985. This summer, the condominium association opposed a change to the city's land use plan that could eventually let the foundation seek to build taller there, citing taller buildings and added traffic.

Mayor Suzanne LaFrance's administration recommends approval. The Assembly has the final say on rezones and is scheduled to hold a public hearing Dec. 1. The change would take effect as soon as it's approved.