Girdwood commercial building gets setback variance over staff objection

The Anchorage Zoning Board of Examiners and Appeals voted 7-0 Thursday to grant a variance allowing a proposed Girdwood mixed-use building to fully encroach into an 8-foot secondary front setback, overriding a staff recommendation for denial.

Staff found that three of the eight required variance standards were only partially met or not met. Planners concluded the building could be reduced in size or redesigned to comply with the setback, and that the variance was not the minimum necessary for reasonable use of the property. No public comments were received, and the Girdwood Board of Supervisors did not comment.

Board member Jason Norris, who made the motion, rejected the argument that the building could simply be redesigned. "I don't think that we can just flippantly say that this would be perfectly fine if you just take that 8-foot chunk out," he said, noting the applicant's plan for three commercial units below three residential units. Board member Mark Maisley added that the lot's secondary front setback faces a dedicated right-of-way that functions as a paved parking lot rather than a street, with roughly 12.5 feet of buffer between the curb and the property line, making the encroachment unlikely to harm the parking area or the right-of-way's use. Board member Chris Schute supported approval but cautioned that economic hardship is "not really one of the criteria that we can use to justify approval or denial of a variance."

After the vote, Norris said he had asked planning staff to review the GC-8 zone's dimensional standards to see "if they were still applicable and still serving us well," a question that connects to the board's debate over whether the current setback rules fit the mixed-use, human-scale development the zone is intended to encourage.