Anchorage planners recommend approving 8-foot Girdwood fence ahead of Monday decision

Anchorage's Planning Department recommends letting Girdwood homeowner Douglas Menish build an 8-foot fence in his front setback, where code allows 4 feet. The Planning and Zoning Commission is scheduled to decide Monday.

Staff found the request meets all eight criteria required for a variance, according to the staff report.

Menish cites his lot's grade, privacy and construction traffic. His house on Hightower Road sits about 2 feet below the road and roughly 200 feet west of the Holtan Hills entrance, his application says, so a 4-foot fence would screen only about 2 feet from the street. He wrote that building the subdivision's entry road from July to October 2025 brought Jake brake noise, dust and "construction trucks turning around in our driveway," and that all construction traffic for Phases 1 through 3 will pass his lot.

He points to a Girdwood Board of Supervisors resolution adopted in October 2025, which says Holtan Hills is expected to increase the number of homes reached by Hightower Road about 2.5 times. Menish describes that as a 250% increase in traffic.

The resolution calls Hightower Road the sole access to Girdwood K-8 School and notes no comprehensive traffic impact analysis had been done. The board asked the Municipality to start one.

A June municipal email in a board meeting packet answered that the Traffic Department does not do traffic studies for private developments. Developers can be required to, once a phase's projected trips cross a threshold. Phase 1's did not, it said, though later phases could.

The staff report says the supervisors did not comment, and no reviewing agency objected. In comments attached to the case, Girdwood neighbor Jody Jenkins wrote that the fence would partially block views along the bike path children walk to school. "It is vital to see far enough ahead to detect moose or bears that frequent Girdwood," she wrote. She called the construction impact "short lived" and asked the commission to keep the 4-foot limit.

Staff would require Menish to work with municipal traffic engineers to keep sight lines at the property clear.