Anchorage sets Dec. 1 hearings on rezones for 44 townhomes and a Chugach utility yard

The Anchorage Assembly is set to hold public hearings Dec. 1 on two rezones that the property owners say would bring the city's zoning map in line with how the land is already used. Both rezones were on the Assembly's Nov. 4 agenda for introduction.

One covers 44 townhomes at Tudor Road and Patterson Street. They sit on about 6.5 acres zoned for neighborhood shops and offices, where city code doesn't allow multifamily homes like them.

Their condominium association asked the city to rezone the land for mixed residential use. "This site is fully developed," the association wrote in its application.

The other covers about 9 acres of Chugach Electric's North Campus between East Third and Fourth avenues, near Post Road. The land was first developed for Municipal Light & Power and has been used for electric utility work since the 1960s, Chugach's representative said. Today it holds equipment storage yards, heavy-vehicle parking, warehouses and offices, according to city planners.

It's zoned for general business. The ordinance would make it heavy industrial, the city's heaviest industrial zoning, which city code reserves for uses like heavy manufacturing, freight terminals and salvage.

A companion ordinance would change the site's designation in the city's 2040 Land Use Plan to general industrial and drop a "greenway-supported development" marking from part of it. The marking calls for new development there to include open space, creek corridors and walking routes. Chugach's representative told the Planning and Zoning Commission in August that it was drawn in 2017 as a possible buffer in case a new Seward-to-Glenn highway connection came through. A 2025 draft study favors routes that avoid the property.

Chugach isn't proposing any new development, its representative said. No one testified against the change at the commission, which recommended approval.

City planners back both rezones. The Assembly will also hold a hearing Dec. 1 on rezoning a 3.8-acre lot in Laurel Acres from single-family residential to heavy industrial.