08/18/2024
Land Use
NEW: Community-driven transition reports from Mayor LaFrance’s transition teams–press release: “Mayor LaFrance received the community-driven transition reports from the three core priority transition groups: Good Government, Safe Streets & Trails, and Building Our Future. These reports are the product of multiple weeks of collaborative work from community members and will help inform the priorities of the administration.” Land use or transportation-related recommendations from the transition group reports:
In 6 months:
“Establish a Municipal Housing Department to consolidate all city functions related to housing and ensure housing goals are met.
Collaborate with faith communities that own developable land.
Establish regular presence from MOA Executive team to build collaborative culture of getting to “yes”.
Establish an Active Transportation Coordinator to lead progress and develop metrics for filling gaps in active transportation networks, including maintenance.
Create an Active Transportation Cabinet with participation from various departments and mayoral leadership (Parks and Rec, AMATS, Dept of Health, Traffic, PM&E).
Celebrate, activate, and maintain our winter city through various events and initiatives
Support the Project Anchorage initiative (a business coalition-led proposal for a 3% sales tax), which would lead to a reduction in property taxes and new revenues generated for capital projects.
Fully staff the municipal government with competent, qualified individuals.”
In One Year:
“Fund public infrastructure with public funds, rather than requires [sic] developers to fund public infrastructure.
Revise Title 21 code to simplify building and design requirements.
Activate Heritage Land Bank with Anchorage Community Development Authority and offer tax incentives to encourage land development and discourage land warehousing.”
In Three Years:
“Build infrastructure that meets basic needs, such as providing bathrooms for access to basic hygiene, trash disposal, and citywide Wi-Fi.
Commit to significant investments in parks and trails through mill rate, sales tax, or large bonds.
Complete trail connections, including Coastal to Ship, Fish Creek to Ocean, and Campbell Creek Lake Otis Crossing
Promote housing development with tax incentives and the 1115 Waiver.
Invest in Fairview and East downtown to stimulate growth and improvement.
Identify development opportunities in the Ship Creek basin, and begin implementation.
Advance mixed-use neighborhood development to improve walkability and livability in neighborhoods across Anchorage.
Invest in basic city infrastructure, such as new sidewalks, bathrooms, lighting, and more.”
Strangely enough, as of this writing the ADN’s article on the report doesn’t mention any of the recommendations about housing.
NEW: “With encampment settled nearby, an Anchorage church plans city’s 1st small shelter village for homeless” In the ADN: “Its goal is to build the shelters by the end of October: four single-occupancy units, sized 8-by-8 feet, and two 8-by-12 double-occupancy units…Greene-Graham envisions trees, shrubs and flowers around the fence, and a pavilion in the center of the village, with a Solo Stove or similar fire pit for community gatherings.” This type of shelter has proven popular in other parts of the PNW because the structures are reasonably affordable to build and under the square footage threshold required for a building permit. One issue that does occasionally come up is where these villages fall under zoning; they seem like a gray area of accessory uses that are dwellings but also not dwellings. See examples of similar projects in Salem, Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, and throughout Washington State. Here’s another article on the topic from earlier this year. See AO 2024-53 for more additional regulatory details.
NEW: Anchorage YWCA Community Housing Conversation on August 23rd, 2024, 5-8pm at the Nave in Spenard. From the announcement: “Join the YWCA as we facilitate the first in a series of conversations WITH and TO Anchorage municipal assembly members about housing challenges in our city. Let your voice, opinion, reality, and perspective be heard! Housing is an EVERYONE issue.” From the CEO of the YWCA: “At the YWCA we want to engage with more diverse stakeholders: traditionally underrepresented groups, women, single-parent families, and BIPOC neighbors in our city, to talk about a future vision of housing in Anchorage.”
NEW: Euclidean zoning’s obsession with conformity: site plan review to rebuild a burnt-down building. From the application for planning case 2024-0097: “Building is a fire-damaged building that is a nonconforming structure. We are requesting to build the structure exactly as it was before the fire.” The nonconformities under review for this 1970s building are encroachment into a secondary front setback and not enough landscaping. Applications like these to rebuild a nonconforming structure exactly as it was must either go through a public notice process and then get special permission from the Planning Director, or go to the Planning and Zoning Commission for approval. During the approval process, the municipality may impose limitations or conditions to meet the approval criteria or "to reduce or minimize any potential adverse impact on other property in the area." Approval criteria include moving the building toward conformity with code and towards compatibility "with uses allowed on adjacent properties, in terms of site design and operating characteristics"---yet what compatibility is is not defined in code, nor is the extent to which the property may be required to move toward conformity. This application was dated May 3, 2024, so it looks like they may have lost a full building season going through this process.
NEW: “Murkowski, Kelly, Kaine, Introduce Legislation to Better Understand, Chart Path Forward on Housing for Older Adults.” From the press release: “The bill mandates a comprehensive study by the Comptroller General of the United States to evaluate housing programs and services for older individuals under the Older Americans Act of 1965…The GAO report will identify gaps in existing housing programs and provide actionable recommendations to ensure seniors on fixed incomes have access to safe, affordable housing.”
NEW: And since we’re on the topic of federal interventions: Biden-Harris Administration Takes New Actions to Lower Housing Costs by Cutting Red Tape to Build More Housing. From the press release: “Building rental units and homes faster means lower costs for consumers: not only will more units get to the market faster, but increasing the speed of construction lowers building costs.” Other main points:
“Making funding available to help communities break down barriers to housing.”
“Providing interest rate predictability to spur housing development.”
“Streamlining requirements for transit-oriented development projects.”
“Accelerating historic preservation reviews for federal housing projects.”
“Challenging communities to use Section 108 to build housing.”
“Enabling more housing types to be built under the HUD Code.”
“Expediting housing permitting”
The additional funding mentioned in the first bullet will come through HUD’s Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing program, which the Municipality applied for last year in the first round of submissions but did not receive. The reforms mentioned in the sixth bullet could mean some big changes for manufactured housing: “the new rule, if finalized, would enable duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes to be built under the HUD Code for the first time, extending the cost-saving benefits of manufactured housing to denser urban and suburban infill contexts.” Current Anchorage code prohibits HUD code manufactured homes everywhere except mobile home parks or R-5 lots.
ONGOING: “Man-caves, she-sheds and business space: A wave of garage condos hits Anchorage” in the ADN: “Three projects are going up around the city. At one, the most expensive of the units cost more than $500,000, pricier than an average single-family home.” We discussed this item last week, but this article provides some interesting context about why this type of development is attractive: “Senko said it’s better for Arctic Glass to have its office and storage in the garage condos, versus paying several thousand dollars monthly for a long-term commercial lease.” Quoting the property owner who earlier this year nearly gave up on his project due to the new site access rules: “Burk said he’s already spent about $400,000 on engineering studies and other work to move the plan forward, he said. The project has been slowed and sometimes threatened by what he described as the municipality’s cumbersome code and zoning requirements.”
Transportation
NEW: Ongoing institutional failure at AKDOT: state legislators sound the alarm about the Statewide Transportation Improvement Program (STIP): Twelve state legislators sent a letter to the AKDOT commissioner asking for cancellation of an amendment to the beleaguered STIP. From DermotCole.com:
“The lawmakers said the mix-and-match funding arrangements sprinkled through the 1,426-page amendment have left everyone confused about what is funded, what will be funded in the years ahead and what commitments the state is making…They said the amendment would take funds “from dozens of projects from around the state, produce delays that endanger next year’s construction season and propose an unprecedented amount of ‘advance construction’ spending that obligates future federal match now…The combination could create a situation in the years ahead in which the state raids the funds designated for Anchorage, Fairbanks and Ma-Su “while simultaneously robbing Alaskans of capital projects to solve safety needs of existing infrastructure.”
AMATS staff touched on this at the July 18, 2024 policy committee meeting, explaining:
“If you add it all up, there’s over a billion dollars that could be on the books by the end of FY 27. That’s a lot of money. I know people say AC [advance construction] is a common practice—it’s a lot. And why this matters for AMATS, is because if you get out years where the ACC [Advanced Construction Conversions] happens and the state doesn’t have the money in their normal allocations to cover it, there are other allocations they can start reaching into to help pay for that. And AMATS is one of those allocations. The federal regulations don't specifically say that AMATS as an MPO must receive these allocations, just that it has to be spent within the AMATS boundary...it also severely limits the flexibility for future projects.”
NEW: AMATS Policy Committee Meeting on 8/15/2024. There was a lot going on at this meeting, starting with discussion of vulnerable road users and wildlife crossings. Around 1:11:00 AMATS staff starts discussing the need for an MTP amendment because of the ballooning costs of AKDOT’s Seward Highway widening project. Staff notes that the estimate for the portion of this highway expansion within the AMATS boundary has increased from $90 million to $461 million, although AKDOT hasn’t really provided much information about the details. At 1:22:37 the AKDOT Central Region Director admits that Alaska might not even have the contracting resources available to work on some stages of the project. At 1:26:33, the Director defends the project because the Seward Highway is an AKDOT-designated “safety corridor”, an area with “fatal crashes higher than anywhere else in the state”. While the need for safety improvements is clear, in reality this Seward Highway safety corridor is not even included in AKDOT’s own list of the most dangerous road facilities in Alaska. In order to mitigate 2 fatalities per year, AKDOT is planning over $2 billion to vastly expand a small stretch of the Seward Highway: how much could that $2 billion do to mitigate the ~12 fatalities per year that occur on DOT roads in the more populated areas of the Anchorage Bowl? (see fatalities map on page 29/46 of the last link).
At 1:27:41, the mayor’s representative makes a comment about using $400 million of this project money on something other than widening highways, to which the Central Region Director ultimately responds:
“…remember that we have a lot of needs across the state…But let’s say we do decide not to spend the $400 million–there’s no guarantee that’s going to land in Anchorage, it could land anywhere in the state. Anchorage has become a hard place to build a project…”.
Assembly member Volland’s response is not clear in the recording, but the Central Region Director returns with: “I remind you that’s not a threat, I mean I live in Anchorage you know, so I want money to be spent, personally…but it’s a fact” . Recall nearly two years ago exactly, when AKDOT’s then-chief of planning for Central Region made a similar statement at an Assembly worksession that when Anchorage wants to cancel a project AKDOT has chosen, or doesn’t accept what AKDOT might offer, the DOT is fully empowered to simply send the money somewhere else:
“It’s DOT’s decision…or, lack of decision, it’s their discussion to prevent projects from being added to the Anchorage Bowl, and added to the Central Region, and the majority of where the population resides…Once you kill this project, this body [Assembly Work Session] the Municipality of Anchorage, or the AMATS people have no say in where this money goes. This money goes right back to DOT, and DOT will basically say thank you and spend it somewhere else in the state. There’s no guarantee you’re ever going to get this money back anywhere in this city…Not that DOT’s a jobs program, I’m just saying…”
Anchorage is the most populated city in the state, and AKDOT is a public agency that is supposed to be managing public funding for public benefit.
NEW: “Massive Cooper Landing bypass road update: expected to finish in 2032” Mentioning this as additional information for consideration related to AKDOT’s historic difficulty in managing its work plan, completing the STIP in a normal way, and struggling to complete big projects. Reporting from Alaska’s News Source:
“It’s a project that’s been discussed since not long after the gravel highway from Cooper Landing to Homer was completed in 1950. Now, due to funding changes, engineers say the massive task won’t be open to traffic until 2032, and will come at a price tag of around $1billion…“Unfortunately, this project is not able to find its way into our Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan, so we’re still working on trying to identify some funding to complete the project, so without funding identified, we’re looking at opening up the project to the public in about 2032,” Tymick said.”
NEW: “State transportation department wants a private snowplow operator to assist in Southcentral Alaska”. In the ADN: “The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities wants to hire a private snowplow operator to help clear roads and sidewalks this winter in Anchorage, Mat Su and the Kenai Peninsula.”
NEW: Fireweed road rehabilitation project. Going to the Planning & Zoning Commission on October 7, 2024. From the application: “The fastest schedule would be final design complete in 2028, but it’s more likely 2029-2030…Local businesses and the traveling public have seen firsthand that well-designed road-diet projects slow traffic and improve safety by incorporating dedicated turn lanes and narrower cross sections that reduce rear end and side swipe crashes.” Why does it take so long to plan and design just over a mile of road?
NEW: I & L/ Minnesota Corridor Plan. From the AMATS public input page: “Alaska DOT&PF is moving towards a corridor planning approach for the AMATS funded Minnesota Drive and I/L Streets to better integrate land use, context and mobility choices into roadway investments...The Plan is intended to guide future development, management, and strategic investments on and within DOT&PF owned and managed Minnesota Drive and I/L Streets.”
LAST WEEK: Hazards of automobility: From Your Alaska Link: “The driver under the influence drove from the next-door neighbors parking lot through from off the road and came all the way across, crashed into a concrete barrier that protects the building and into the building," said Sean Shawcross, owner of Carousel Childcare Center.” It is unfortunate that the Anchorage transportation system makes driving under the influence an easier choice than riding the bus or getting home by some other means.