09/08/2024

Written By Guest User

Land Use

  • NEW: September 10, 2024 Assembly Meeting. Items of interest:

    • Alcohol tax plan. Goal 1 Strategy: “Increase supply of housing and rental assistance funds for low-income households,especially households with young children.” Item 10.b.2. 

    • Retaining foreclosed properties for wetlands preservation. AO 2024-58. From the memo: ”The retention of these parcels will contribute to the environmental health of the lower section of the Campbell Creek watershed.” Item 11.a.

    • Short term rental reporting. AO 2024-81. From AM 655-2024: “This new proposal will place no requirements on those individual operators, and only require data from the STR hosting platforms to be included in their room tax returns which they are already providing.” Item 14.b. See also the ADN article below.

    • Property tax exemptions extension. AO 2024-84. From AM 682-2024: “The proposed ordinance extends the deadline for applications for tax exemptions under chapter 12.70 until February 28, 2025. As the original tax exemption deadline was February 29th of this year, the ordinance also allows any projects that began construction after the 29th to still apply for this exemption, provided they satisfy all other requirements.” Item 14.d. 

  • NEW: Rezone from PLI to B-2C downtown at the 9/16/2024 Planning & Zoning Commission. From the staff report: “The applicant does not have development plans at this time, although they state in the application that the B-2C zone will be advantageous to future development.” The Municipality updated the Downtown zoning code in 2023.

  • NEW: “'Significant' demolition begins as Northway Mall renovation gets underway” in the ADN: 

“Work crews have begun a partial demolition of the blighted Northway Mall as the Florida-based owner prepares to renovate it under plans that include an O’Reilly Auto Parts, people with knowledge of the project said…‘The improvements are now underway, and we are excited for the opportunity to bring new medical, warehouse, industrial, retail and other uses to the property,’ Julie Fanning, marketing director with property owner Benderson Development, said in an email on Monday.”

  • NEW: “Assembly members want data from short-term rental platforms to help address housing crunch” in the ADN: 

“Three Anchorage Assembly members are proposing that Airbnb, Vrbo and similar hosting platforms provide more information about the growing short-term rental market in Anchorage, in an effort to better understand the market’s impact on the city’s housing crunch. The proposal places no requirements on the operators of the rentals, according to a memorandum discussing it. It would require the platforms to provide 'a breakdown of the number of operators, rooms rented, and taxes due by zip code,' the memo says.The platforms currently are not required to provide that information when they submit Anchorage room taxes on behalf of the operators...Anchorage room taxes submitted by hosting platforms reached $6.5 million last year, up about 20% from the year before.” 

Short term rental regulation has been a topic of discussion since at least last year. The Assembly discussed and voted to approve AO 2023-110 last March, ultimately the ordinance was vetoed by Mayor Bronson. See also item 14.b above at the 9/10/2024 Assembly Meeting.

  • NEW: Fairbanks in the tax abatement game: From the Daily News Miner: “A proposed property tax incentive to build clusters of three-bedroom homes moved from the Fairbanks North Star Borough Economic Development Commission Tuesday, but not without extensive amendments.”  Read Fairbanks ordinance 2024-21 for yourself; it appears to provide up to a 10 year tax exemption for any residential zone, developments of at least 5 new units, 12 month occupancy, and units must have at least 3 bedrooms. 

  • NEW: “Editorial: The inescapable hard truths about homelessness. In the ADN: 

“While few people relish the prospect of a shelter in close proximity to their home, the reality is that a system of dispersed shelters will all be in someone’s proverbial backyard — or at least close by….One of the most promising grassroots shelter developments in years is in the works near Central Lutheran Church on 15th Avenue, as a new nonprofit (appropriately named In Our Backyard and led by the church’s congregants) works to stand up a half-dozen tiny housing units for older homeless residents.

See a bit more discussion of these new tiny house shelters in the 8/18/2024 bulletin.

“The Anchorage School District operates and maintains 90 facilities; 84 schools and 6 operational facilities. The average age of district facilities is 37 years.There are 33 facilities over 50 years old, including 16 facilities that are 60 years or older.” “The ASD is the largest school district in the state, and while overall enrollment has been in decline in recent years, the geographic distribution of students continues to shift due to the mobility of the state/city population. In order to meet short-term over-capacity situations, the district has 82 relocatable classrooms.” 

See pages 41-42/124 for student projections up until 2029. One interesting note for transportation: assuming that the column “membership” means enrollment, it looks like about 71% of upper school children use ASD transportation, while only 38% of elementary school children use it. Seems like there could be some opportunities there for looking at how any students are getting to school, if their routes are safe, or possibly reducing the transportation burden borne by parents (see pages 89-92/124).

  • Presentation by Pomeroy Lodging (Alyeska Resort). From this presentation and this Alaska Public Media article from last year the Girdwood community seems to have been fairly successful at squeezing amenities out of this development, including a rec center, “a new daycare facility, conference center, and covered ice rink”. 

  • Muldoon area tax incentive. Discussion of using transit-supportive corridors and extending incentives in Muldoon and elsewhere in the city. Assembly Member Martinez seems to be indicating interest in creating overlays along these corridors to allow more transit-supportive density. Around 1:31:13 Assembly Member Volland asks if the planning department is working on anything related to transit supportive corridors, to which planning staff responds: “We have several transportation-related projects going, but nothing specific to amending transit-supportive corridors.” Transit-supportive corridors were an idea out of the planning department from the 2040 Land Use Plan.  

Transportation

  • NEW: “Driver hurt when semi goes off Seward Highway and into Turnagain Arm” In Alaska Public Media: ““The preliminary investigation indicates the semi-truck, which was hauling one trailer, was being driven southbound on the Seward Highway when the driver lost control and veered offroad into (the water),” Oistad wrote in an email late Wednesday morning.” Will widening the Seward highway help prevent issues like these in the future?

  • NEW: “Downtown Anchorage’s protected bike lanes going away soon.” In Alaska's News Source: “Brad Coy, the municipal traffic engineer for Anchorage, said the preliminary data in the city has shown increased bike traffic around events in the area, as well as the daily lunch hour.” Coy mentioned September 19th as the date for removal of the bike lanes at the 9/5/2024 TAC meeting linked below.

  • REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS: Intercity & Passenger Rail in Alaska. From the Alaska Railroad: 

“The Alaska Railroad Corporation (ARRC) is requesting proposals from firms interested in providing proposals to advance the Anchorage North & South Corridor for comprehensive intercity passenger rail service development planning activities under the Federal Railroad (FRA) Corridor Identification and Development (CID) Program. The corridor spans 470 miles from Seward to Whittier, Anchorage, and Fairbanks. The scope of work is Step 1 of the FRA CID Program, which includes development of the statement of work, schedule, and budget for generating a Service Development Plan (SDP), which is Step 2 of the FRA’s CID Program.” 

It’s not immediately clear if these proposals would be for true local passenger service or primarily tourist service. Full notice here.

  • NEW:  “$25M Federal Grant Boosts Road Projects in Anchorage and Alaskan Communities.” In Your Alaska Link: “The city of Anchorage will get nearly $25 million to support its Bragaw Street Corridor project. Part of the plan is to eliminate two of the existing four travel lanes to allow for bike lanes. This will also create more space between driving lanes and sidewalks, improving winter snow storage.” Read the USDOT press release materials here.

  • LAST WEEK: AMATS Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) Meeting on 9/5/2024. Overview:

    • AMATS Boundary Discussion. Memo. Despite prior approval by the AMATS Policy Committee, AKDOT&PF is requesting another round of review to reconsider expanding the AMATS boundary south along the Seward Highway due to potential delay for a AKDOT project in that area. While discussing the AMATS boundary, the MPO Coordinator makes a nod to induced demand by mentioning that the highway itself is a generator of vehicular traffic.

    • Highway Safety Improvement Program funding: Memo. Discussion of options to improve the pedestrian experience--not just build a wall to prevent crossings--on 5th Ave.

    • STIP Amendment #1 Comments. Letter from AKDOT to AMATS, and then the AMATS response. While the DOT&PF letter was in response to AMATS comments on STIP Amendment 1 (a state document), the DOT response included several requests for changes to the TIP (an AMATS document). AMATS staff recommended incorporating 4 out of 5 of the minor DOT recommendations when updating the TIP.

    • Fish passage project: memo. The TAC voted to forward the letter on to the Policy Committee. 

    • DOT’s corrective action to create a coordination document with MPOs. Original corrective action here. Two interesting comments from staff:

      First, AMATS will be able to nominate projects to future Statewide Transportation Improvement Programs (STIPs): “The most significant part is the STIP development and amendments. And there are two things that I want to point out that are significant. The first is DOT will solicit nominations for projects for inclusion in the STIP from the MPOS in accordance with the Alaska Administrative Code. MPOs will be given 30 days to submit nominations and any comments regarding evaluation criteria. That’s huge. In my time with DOT I don’t believe there was ever an official solicitation of nominations from the MPO, from AMATS, so seeing that in writing here is pretty significant and I hope we all pay attention when that time period happens–it’s our opportunity to provide nominations to DOT.” 

Second, “The MPO will be invited to participate when applicable and will be given notice per the Administration Code on the project evaluation board for projects that are nominated…I don’t think AMATS, in recorded history, has been invited to participate on the project evaluation board in this way before. So, that’s huge.” 

  • ONGOING: AKDOT STIP failures: from Dermot Cole: “State transportation department fails to explain loss of tens of millions in highway funds” Tweet in response by Representative Cliff Groh: “This is very bad news and demands an explanation from the Dunleavy administration. #akleg”. See the official FHWA redistribution notice showing Alaska in last place here.

Events

  • ONGOING: Community Councils Website Improvement Survey

  • ONGOING: Midtown District Plan Open House: September 17, 2024 from 5:30-7:30 pm at the BP Energy Center. Zoom link.

  • ONGOING:  Federation of Community Councils town hall series: “Demystifying Community Councils: Understanding Their Role in Fostering Civic Engagement.” Monday, September 23, 2024, 7:00pm - 8:00pm, in Person at Wilda Marston Theater and via Zoom. Register here.



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