Anchorage weighs a variance for a 1998 setback encroachment

A house on Chandalar Drive has been sitting 1.3 feet too close to the property line since 1998, and the city is being asked to make it official.

The owner, Patrick Waringuez, wants a variance letting the home stay where it is rather than cutting back the encroachment. Planning staff recommend approval, and the Zoning Board of Examiners and Appeals was set to take it up Sept. 10.

Nobody noticed for 22 years. The house went up under a 1998 permit, and the problem surfaced only in 2020, when the survey required to close out that permit showed the structure inside the five-foot setback. A new survey this year confirmed it has not moved.

Staff found the lot itself unusual enough to justify the variance. It runs a 24 percent slope, steep enough that only four comparable parcels on the street match it, and removing 1.3 feet of house would be expensive and difficult.

The city mailed 213 notices and got one objection. A neighbor wrote by hand that the house "should have never been allowed to double in size," called it "over-built for the common size homes in this area," and described a section of cut-out concrete that "now sits empty un-safe."

If the variance passes it stays with the property, not the owner.

The board is also weighing a separate change that would let the planning director approve encroachments up to 15 percent administratively, rather than the current 5 percent. The department says 10 variance cases over the past decade could have been handled that way. The Assembly would decide.