Company asks Anchorage to rezone six lots off Abbott Road for business

A company called Arlon LLC has asked Anchorage to rezone six lots on Arlon Street, just north of Abbott Road, from low-density residential to general business. The Planning and Zoning Commission will take up the request Dec. 14, according to the commission's hearing notice.

Most of the lots sit on a block that has been going commercial one lot at a time. In the file for two nearby Elim Street lots the Anchorage Assembly took up in June, city planners wrote that the area "is likely not going to be developed for residential uses" and recommended updating the city's land use plan to reflect that, rather than handling rezones parcel by parcel.

At a Feb. 2 commission meeting on an earlier request in the area, Commissioner Scott Pulice said he saw commercial developing along Abbott "as it's kind of supposed to." Residential lots next to the road weren't being developed, he said, and "nobody wants to invest in that." But he added, "I don't think the whole neighborhood needs to be wiped out and turned to B-3."

Arlon LLC's six lots cover 1.63 acres at 8950 to 9100 Arlon St., on the west side of the street between Abbott Road and East 88th Avenue, in the Abbott Loop Community Council area. Five are in the Moorehand Subdivision and one is in the Arlon Subdivision. B-3 zoning allows businesses as well as housing and mixed-use projects. A companion request would change the lots' land use plan designation from Compact Mixed Residential-Medium to Town Center.

The city has approved the same pairing on the block before. On July 7, the Assembly voted 11-0 to make the Town Center change for one Moorehand lot and to rezone it and one other to B-3. In July, the commission unanimously backed the same changes for a mobile home lot on Elim Street.

Daniel McKenna-Foster of the city's Long-Range Planning Division told the commission in July that "when the land use plan was done, it didn't really maybe consider Abbott as a corridor in the way that people make land use decisions based on the road design alongside it." In September he said the rate of rezones has increased, and that the Compact Mixed Residential-Medium designation in Abbott Loop means "higher density residential development" under the 2040 Land Use Plan.

The commission will take public testimony Dec. 14 and make a recommendation. The Assembly makes the final decision.