Planning and Zoning Commission - May 5, 2025 - 2025-05-05 18:30:00

Okay, um, welcome to the May 5th meeting of the Planning and Zoning Commission. Call this meeting to order.

May we have the roll call, please? Andres Spinelli. Here. Jared Gardner. Here.

Radhika Krishna. Here. Jim Winchester. Here. Scott Pullis.

Here. Jeff Rahn. Here. Brandy Eber. Here.

Greg Strike is excused. You have a quorum. Thank you. First item, uh, Thursday, March 20th, 2025 minutes. Is there a motion to approve minutes?

That is moved by Commissioner Pullis, seconded by Commissioner Gardner. Any discussion on the minutes?

Hearing none. Any opposed?

Hearing none. Minutes are approved.

Um, next item, disclosures. Commissioner Pulis. Yeah, on item G2, the official streets and highways plan tonight, My employer, Lounsbury, has contracts with the Department of Public Facilities, the state, for two projects currently underway on that list, the Spinard and Fireweed projects. So for, for changes right now on the list and Do you believe you have any conflicts? It is a legislative item, not an actual case.

Oh, I have a hard time answering that. I mean, if I was completely negative about it, I could influence it. I would say yes. So yeah, I think I do actually. Would you like to recuse yourself from this case?

Yes. Okay, Commissioner Pullis will recuse from case 2025-0025.

Any other commissioners having items they wish to disclose?

Hearing none, we will move on to the public hearing, and I will read the procedures by which the public may speak to the Commission.

After staff presentation is completed on public hearing items, the Chair will ask for public testimony. Testimony on the issue. Persons who wish to testify will follow the time limits established in the Commission rules and procedures. Petitioners, including his or her representatives, will receive 10 minutes. Part of this time may be reserved for rebuttal.

Representatives of groups, community councils, PTAs, et cetera, will receive 5 minutes. Individuals will receive 3 minutes. When your testimony is complete, you may be asked questions by the Commission. You may only testify once on any issue unless questioned by the Commission. Any party of interest wishing to appeal shall first file with the Planning Director within 7 days of the Commission's decision made on the record a written notice of intent to appeal in accordance with AMC 2103-050(a)(4)(a).

Commission recommendations to the Anchorage Assembly are not appealable. Following approval of the written findings of fact and decision, any party of interest may within 20 days File an appeal by filing a notice of appeal and paying the appeal fee and deposit in accordance with Section 2103050. The notice of appeal must be filed with the planning director on a form prescribed by the municipality. If the appellant is not the applicant, the appellant's notice of appeal shall include proof of service on the applicant.

May we please We have staff presentation on case 2025-0038. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Gerdwood Building Company is requesting development master plan approval for the Alpenglow Residences, which will be two mixed-use buildings on two lots in the GC-9 zoning district in Gerdwood.

The Gerdwood Board of Supervisors provided a letter of nonobjection for this application and this project. It's found on page 82 of your packets. State and municipal reviewing agencies have no objections to approval of the application. The Planning Department has reviewed the approval criteria for a development master plan and found that the approval criteria is met. The department's recommending approval subject to conditions 1 through 4 on page 8.

Conditions of approval 1 and 2 are just standard conditions of approval with all cases. Conditions of approval 3 and 4 were requested by project management and engineering and the traffic engineer. And so the first one, both of them having to do with the Woonerf Street, the shared driveway into the site. And so the first one was traffic wanting to, you know, resolve with traffic, the turning radiuses, maneuvering and clearance, and the landscaping. And the other one is resolving fire access with the fire department, fire prevention.

This is sort of set up to approve Phases 1 and 2. There'll be a building on each lot. They have the, you know, the full architectural design for Phase 1, the first building. The second building will be, you know, a similar design theme, a mixed-use building. We have the footprint of the building, but we don't have the full architectural plan.

Approval here will just save them having to return to the Commission in the future for sort of the second half of the project, if the Commission's willing to approve everything. Now, Planning will review Phase 2 to make sure that the building follows the same, you know, the same design theme as the first. And also, there's a few design alternatives, deviations from Girdwood site design and development standards. Those are listed on pages 6 and 7 of your packet.

The department supports all of these design alternatives. They make sense. This is a small infill site. This is mixed-use development, and if this is what it takes to get a mixed-use development and nice building, the Planning Department supports it, is recommending approval. I'd be happy to answer questions, and the applicant is here as well.

Thank you.

Um, I'll just, uh, ask a question.

Department recommendation number 3 and 4 Aren't these items that would be resolved in the land use permit anyhow? I guess I don't have a problem with them, but I guess just for clarity, wouldn't resolving these comments with these various departments happen during the land use permit that would be applied for after this? Or maybe it's already applied for, I don't know. No, I don't think so. I think that Um, uh, the, uh, resolving the conditions of approval, um, and, uh, updating the site plan in, in the planning department's file, which the planning department will stamp as approved.

Um, they'll need that, uh, to, to carry over to the land use permit file so that the buildings— the design is the same.

This will save them time trying to resolve that at the building permit counter.

Okay, thank you.

Any more questions for staff? Commissioner Rahn. Thank you. Through the chair to staff, what's the on-street parking condition there on the street furniture facing the parcel along Hightower Road? Do you know?

Is it—. Is there street parking allowed? Immediately adjacent to the parcel? Um, yes, there's parallel parking spaces in front of, uh, on street parking. That's correct.

And, and in this, uh, this zoning district, uh, there's also public parking lots, and the idea is that you people would make use of public parking lots, and this would be kind of a walkable new town site.

Last call for questions to staff.

Seeing none, can we please have the petitioner's presentation?

You'll need to turn the mic on. Should be a button somewhere. Green button? Yep, there you go, you're on. I figured it out.

Thanks a lot. My name is Corey Piper. I'm a physical therapist. I've been working working in the Girdwood community since 2013. I started off literally in a converted mailroom in a not-for-profit clinic directly across the street.

Over the years, I have practiced out of a church vestibule, eventually landing my own space downtown in Girdwood.

Having spent that many years working in Girdwood, I've gotten to know the community at a more in-depth level than just somebody who's passing through. I'm now the longest-serving medical provider in Girdwood. That being said, I can see the future of Girdwood growing and the necessity of rehabilitation services to be offered directly in the community. Currently, about 40% of our people, we have to transfer out of Girdwood down to Anchorage. And that's— it's good that we have that option, but it's not always the greatest option for everybody.

After we build this building, we should be able to provide about 95% of all services for rehabilitation right there in Girdwood. The fact that we get to build housing and other commercial opportunities for other businesses is a bonus. And I think it's reflective of our commitment to Girdwood. And so I thank you guys for having me here today. And if you have any questions, feel free.

Any questions for the petitioner?

Commissioner Polis, have you guys met with the fire department recently on the fire access issues? Any bright lights coming on resolution of that issue? I'm going to turn that one over to Marco for that. He's— it just looks tough. That's why I'm asking.

I mean, I get it.

Hi, my name is Marco Zuccaro. I'm with Z Architects. We're the project fleet designers, and we did lay out the 150-foot hose lengths, and we have plenty of space in the moon earth to get a 20-foot-wide fire truck laying in there without a turnaround. And so, uh, when we first submitted the project, the diagram wasn't very clear, so we redid the diagram. I had sent it to Francis, so we believe that the site is fully compliant with fire access.

I see no further questions.

Um, you have 8 minutes and 23 seconds for rebuttal. Okay, so I do— I can respond to you.

You want to just wait till rebuttal because we stopped your time and we're going to open it up for public hearing and then, okay, when, if nobody comes, then you can take it away. Um, you guys, I don't know, step aside or something. All right, anybody from the public wishing to testify?

Hearing, seeing none, we'll go to rebuttal. Okay, I just wanted to follow up on the parking question. So in the GC-7 district right across the street, we're in GC-9, there's no parking on site allowed, and there's 93 public parking spots within a 600-foot walking distance of the site that were put there expressly so that these sites could be maximally built out and provide a kind of a street front walking experience in downtown Kirkwood. So we have plenty of parking near the site and in addition to the 5 on-site.

All right. Is that it? That's it. Thank you.

Thank you.

With that, we will close the public hearing.

What is— what is the will of the body?

Commissioner Krishna, would you like to state your motion? Sure, I move in case 2025-0038 to approve the Elp and Glow Residences Development Master Plan, Phases 1 and 2, subject to conditions 1 through 4 as shown on page 8 of the staff report. Thank you. That is seconded by Commissioner Rahn. Commissioner Krishna, would you like to speak to the motion?

Yes, I intend to support this motion. Um, the petitioner has described development that will provide medical services in the community and has clearly worked with both the department and the community to address all potential questions. As a result, we have seen no— what? No comments nor any letters of objection or further questions from the community. And would welcome findings from the Commission.

Anybody else wishing to speak to the motion?

I also intend to support the motion. We'll call for the vote.

Ms. Heber, how do you vote? Yeah. Thank you.

That motion passes.

Farewell, Commissioner Polis.

All right, can we please have the staff presentation on Case 2025-0025? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, this is Daniel McKenna Foster, Long Range Planning. This is a kind of phase 1 of an update to the Official Streets and Highways Plan.

Thank you. I like to think of the Official Streets and Highways Plan as sort of like the zoning of the road system. Roads, right-of-ways, of course, not zoned, but we still have some— a set of classifications for them. And those classifications determine to what standard the roads get built. If something comes along and it's time to upgrade the road, you know, what set of dimensions is available to it.

So what this proposal does is it updates some of those classifications in the Official Streets and Highways Plan, known as functional classifications, to sort of better align those with the realities of the traffic that— traffic— the traffic department has observed, community needs, community preferences. Two good examples of this are Spinard Road. The second— the middle section of Spinard Road has been going through a big upgrade process. Throughout that project, to try to make that road fit with the SMART corridor plan, PM&E and traffic, they had to keep asking for variances just to fulfill the sort of intent of the plan because the rate the road was classified made it too difficult to do that sort of by right. So what— and another example is Fireweed.

There's a lot of discussion about an upcoming Fireweed project and how to make that into a road that the community really wants. But because of the current classification, that classification forces that road to become a little bit bigger, a little bit wider than it might otherwise be. There's a number of reasons why that isn't always a good thing. It's higher maintenance costs, it's maybe not what the community wants. So this is the first step in updating the whole plan, but this is really just updating a number of the specific classifications of streets.

So again, sort of like rezoning a couple of streets to a different classification. We— this was a really good collaborative project. We worked with the the capital improvements team, the traffic team, the PM&E team, and really we just took what they've seen and all the stuff they've collected over the, over the last probably 10 years and put that into ordinance format. We actually had a much longer list, but these were the ones that came up as the most important. So you'll see there's a map in here.

I apologize, I'm the map maker. It's not a very good map because the map shows what the official streets and highways plan map would look like if this is adopted. But it just shows all of the current classifications. So glad to answer any questions. Thank you.

Commissioner Krishna.

So I took a look at the official streets and highway plan, and it seems like most of the criteria for changing the facility type is traffic count. Is that correct, or are there other criteria that are used in determining what the facility type is. Yeah, I think traffic count is sort of generally the dominant criteria to look at, but also, you know, when some of these roads were classified 10, 20, 30 years ago, the expectations were different about what might happen in this— and then in that area. For example, there are a bunch of roads up on the hillsides that are classified at really high standard, like— I don't want to say arterial, but something that Nobody's ever expecting that much development to happen up there that you would have that many people driving to and from there. So it's mostly traffic counts.

And again, most of this comes out of the traffic department saying, we don't see a fraction of the volume that was supposed to happen there. But also different sort of community needs in terms of what they want out of the street. Spinard is a good example. The Spinard corridor plan had a pretty concrete vision about the way that road should look and the way it should function. And the official streets and highways plan, which is from 2014, did not necessarily align with that because the Smart Corridor Plan is from 2021.

So a lot of this traffic counts, a lot of it's also just changing preferences in our roads. And then there's the other piece of the bigger roads are a lot harder to maintain. And in sort of this fiscal environment, it makes sense to build with what we have and make the most of what we have.

Sure, go ahead.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] I understand that the impetus for this right now is that there are projects happening this summer on many of these roads and there might be some timeliness here. I think just a request when we do the larger update of the official streets and highway plan later this year and we might update additional functional classifications and annotated list with some of the reasoning would help us evaluate the, you know, the reasoning behind some of these changes.

Noted. Thank you to the Chair. Next up, Commissioner Gardner. Thank you. I guess my question is, looking at the— for the ones where you're changing, you're proposing to change the termini, I guess, if that's the right word.

Um, for some of these classifications, does that create a gap, um, where there's potentially not a classification? I'm just wondering. So for, for the Glenn Highway, for example, changing it from Seward, going to Seward classified as a freeway, and cutting off at Airport Heights, is there a default classification that then continues to exist between Airport Heights and the Seward Highway for the Glenn that needs to be accounted for? Through the chair, there wouldn't be any gaps. I, I think in case of changing those termini, it was, you know, there's a lot in here that isn't shown.

There might— so there, for the Glen Highway, there's another section, or, um, that one's tricky because we're also, you know, waiting on the, the PEL project to see what happens with that. But I can say that there are no gaps, or there's no areas that aren't classified. In general, if it doesn't show up on the streets and highways plan, it's just— I think local roads are not necessarily shown or they're not classified specially. But there won't be any gaps on it. So if it's not shown here, it's just shown on the map, but maybe the classification isn't changing or it's already at that level.

Okay, thanks.

Commissioner Rhone.

Thank you, through the chair. Um, for the changes proposed in terms of facility type, are they all a de-escalation or downgrading of facility, or are there any that are proposed for escalation or increase from one facility to a larger type of facility or a higher volume type, type of facility? Through the chair, they are all reducing the classifications, except some that just are changing the terminus, so they're not actually changing the classifications.

In terms of the Girdwood example, it's going from a commercial industrial collector to a collector. So I think that's more just about the types of use. So maybe it's a reduction, but not, not so much. But in general, yes, because a lot of these roads were planned for just these really big traffic numbers that never materialized and also just don't really make sense with sort of the way things are going.

Okay.

We will open the public hearing.

Are there any members of the public wishing to testify? Testify.

John Isaacs, live in West Anchorage, testifying for myself. I have talked a little bit with the planning staff about this, and I think this is a really— it's a good concept. It's an interesting exercise. Some of the questions you guys have asked I think are important, because if you look at the function of a road, you have traffic, but then there's also what sort of traffic it carries. And I suspect a lot of community councils would be interested in participating in a bigger look at this exercise.

You know, West Northern Lights is a classic example. It serves neighborhoods, it goes through a school area, it serves the airport, there's a lot of truck traffic, it's a DOT-owned road. And certainly if you were to ask the community, they'd rather see less trucks on the road. Is that an option, something that can be done with this? So I think as you go forward and look at the bigger picture and look at other streets.

I think it would be really good to have some participation in a working group or something to ask some of these questions, because I think, you know, you are asking some really good questions tonight. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Anybody else wishing to testify?

Seeing none, we will close the public hearing.

Or before we close the public hearing, did staff have anything to add? Yeah, through the chair, I just wanted to respond to that, and I'm glad you brought it up. Um, the— this is phase one. Our plan is to do a larger, um, kind of update to the entire plan later in the year. We have secured funding to that— for that, and that would look more at sort of the bigger concept of the streets and highways plan and 'Cause it really is about, well, where does truck traffic go?

How do people move through the city? And there are a lot of those discussions going on right now. But so that will, we're looking forward to that being a bigger, more of like a plan update. This is just sort of a quick triage, but thank you for the comment. [Speaker] Now we will close the public hearing.

What is the will of the body?

Commissioner Rahn, would you like to state your motion?

Yes, thanks. I move in case 2025-0025 to recommend to the Anchorage Assembly approval of an ordinance amending the official streets and highways plan, updating the functional classifications for a number of streets and roads throughout the Municipality of Anchorage, and amending Anchorage Municipal Code 21 01.080 to reflect these updates. That is seconded by Commissioner Winchester. Commissioner Rahn, would you like to speak to the motion?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I concur with staff's suggested findings in that the official streets and highways plan has not been updated since 2014. Departments within the municipality collaborated to update a target list of key right-of-way facilities. And notably, one written comment from a member of the public was extremely supportive of the work that was done and its outcomes.

Additionally, we heard public testimony tonight requesting input from— potential future input or interest from community councils, which was well received by the department as well. I intend to support the motion and would add a note around future work in this area and the potential to include non-motorized traffic considerations, alternative transportation, with respect to classification of roads in Anchorage. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else wishing to speak to the motion?

Hearing and seeing none, we'll call for the vote.

Miss Eber, how do you vote?

Yes. Thank you.

That motion passes.

And that wraps up the public hearings. We'll move on to Title 21 discussion.

And I guess we'll hand it over to staff to hear about the Planning Department's 2025 work plan.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, Daniel McEnany Foster, Long Range Planning. We provided to you our planning department work plan for 2025. This was the May 1st version.

I think there are already some changes on it, so I would just expect that this document will keep evolving over time. We set it up as a calendar so you can kind of go through and check off or cross out the, the things that we've worked on or completed this year. We are already into May. You will see the 10-year targeted plan review that we worked on at the work session earlier going towards the end of the year. In the second part, we have just long-range planning division projects and operations, the other stuff we do, things like the Geotechnical Advisory Commission, Historic Preservation Commission, other studies or strategies we have planned, some comprehensive plan amendments, some of those are already completed, the long-range transportation Implementation strategy was adopted by the assembly last month, for example.

And then other stuff, regulatory amendments, other implementation actions, and just programs and operations, wetlands permits, commenting on zoning and planning cases, review of the municipal CIP and the school district CIP. And then current planning division has also provided an overview of some of their projects, the boards and commissions they staff, their case reviews. They're doing a lot of great work on process improvements, stuff about trying trying to get the web pages to be a little more updated, to get some of our materials to move a little bit more smoothly. One thing, you know, to get all of our PDFs so they're text searchable, tracking, just a lot of that stuff. So they're making some really good progress there, looking at the fee schedule, looking at the context-sensitive solutions street review process, and also working with the Long Range Planning Division.

Another thing we're working on right now and hoping to get moving in June, and again, this isn't on the work plan yet, is it started out of the tenure targeted plan review. We wanted to have a way to connect with people and give them all the information we have as soon as we have it. So we're looking at creating a sort of a newsletter system similar to what the assembly has and do that probably for all projects. Or depending if there's more interest, we can split it up. But so that anybody who's interested can subscribe and they can get all the information sent to them.

We'll probably start out doing it monthly, but maybe moving to a more frequent interval. But that, that's a way that we want to make sure that everybody knows what we know. Everybody can see all the information that's coming out. And as we work on this stuff, everybody can stay informed. So that's something we're looking at, hoping to figure out by June.

Thank you.

Commissioner Krishna. I, I just want to thank the department for putting this together and sharing it with us. It's the first time I have seen a department work plan in my 6 years on the commission, and it's extremely helpful in seeing the work all of the enormous volume of work that the department does and finding ways that we can support that work. I love the idea of a monthly newsletter, and my only request would that be that you ask us when this commission can provide resolutions or other ways to support that work.

I would like to echo Commissioner Christensen's comments and add that congratulations for following code, because it's actually mandated in code that we see this work plan once per year. So congratulations for that.

All right. Seeing no other commissioners in the queue for Title 21 discussion, we will move on to Commissioner or comments. Any comments from the commission?

Seeing none, we will look for a motion to adjourn.

Motion to adjourn on the table. Moved by Commissioner Winchester, seconded by Commissioner Gardner. Any objection? Hearing none, we are adjourned. Thank you, Brandy.

Thank you.