Anchorage Planning and Zoning Commission to weigh shop-house and self-storage ordinances

Some of the most important housing zoning in Anchorage isn't in residential neighborhoods — it's along the busy commercial corridors. The B-3 commercial district, meant for business along heavy-traffic roads, has quietly become the city's biggest engine for new housing, and especially senior housing: since 2014, about 63 percent of Anchorage's new senior units, and more than a fifth of all new units in the Bowl, were built there. A proposal before the Planning and Zoning Commission would lean in.

The ordinance would make it easier to build homes in commercial zones by right — without special permits. It would formally allow "shop-houses" (live-work buildings where a garage or workshop is larger than the living space), permit multifamily buildings outright in several commercial districts, and strip away barriers like minimum lot sizes and caps on how many structures a lot can hold. A companion measure runs the other direction on cars: it would make big self-storage facilities and large parking lots harder to build in B-3, requiring special permits rather than allowing them by right.

Planning staff frame the pair as a shift from car-centered uses toward housing and people. Cook Inlet Housing Authority, one of the biggest builders in these zones, backs the changes. An engineering firm cautioned that pushing large parking lots through a permit process could add time and cost for projects that depend on them.

The commission's vote is a recommendation. The Anchorage Assembly holds the final say.