Staff back letting 1976 Fairbanks duplex keep both units in single-family zone

Fairbanks North Star Borough Hearing Officer Kellen Spillman will decide Thursday, Nov. 5, whether a 1976 duplex at 4236 and 4238 Birch Lane can keep both units. Both lots under the building are now zoned Single-Family Residential, which allows only one dwelling.

Bryce Weaver applied Sept. 21 for grandfather rights, a legal status that lets a property keep a use that no longer conforms to current zoning. Borough planner Sarah Bingham recommends granting them, finding the building held two units before the area was rezoned.

The building sits on two lots in the style of a townhouse, according to the staff report. The borough first zoned the land Unrestricted Use in 1968 and rezoned it Rural Residential in 1970, and duplexes were allowed under both.

The Planning Commission approved splitting the 2.5-acre parent lot into two equal lots on Aug. 3, 1976. A borough assessor's card recorded "a new duplex" on Aug. 30, 1976, Bingham wrote. In a September 1976 letter, the owner asked to divide the duplex, then under construction, into two townhouse homes that could be sold separately, and the commission approved that request in November.

Staff could not find a zoning permit for the building or the ordinance that rezoned the lot. Zoning maps place the change sometime between 1989 and 1997.

Under borough code, a change in ownership does not void grandfather rights. The status would end if the duplex stopped being used as two units for 36 months.

The hearing is at 10 am Thursday in the Mona Lisa Drexler Assembly Chambers in Fairbanks and will include public testimony.