Council sends downtown district back to planning

WASILLA — Business leaders opposed to a proposed downtown overlay district will have their way for the time being.

Wasilla City Council members voted unanimously to send a downtown overlay district back to the city planning commission for several months in order to re-engage the community in the process.

Business owners have generally told city leaders the proposed district would place an unfair burden on businesses there, that some portions of the proposed guidelines and regulations for the district could impact their bottom lines, and that the size of the district was too large.

For example, William Imlach, who helped construct the Imlach Professional Building on Main Street, said Monday that the new guidelines reducing on-street parking size from 10-foot-by-20-foot rectangles to 8.5 foot-by-10-foot slots. That’s too small, Imlach said.

“I’m here to tell you that a large building on small lots doesn’t make more money,” he said. “I built a nice big building. My building was in compliance with the planning commission at that time. It went 15 years without being rented up because I didn’t have enough parking.”

Imlach ultimately bought out an adjacent building to provide parking.

City officials — including planning commission members at a rare joint meeting of the council and the commission — have generally responded that business owners were involved in the planning phases for the district and, that aesthetic and business restrictions seen as troublesome could be appealed.

At least one city council member appeared willing to respond to business owners now.

Even though business owners, for now, have thwarted the attempt to implement what they see as unreasonable restrictions, city officials cautioned that without continued involvement from business owners, a similar outcome could result.

“I think we’re gonna have a problem getting people from the city involved in this overlay program just because we had it with the ATV thing, we had it with the sign issues,” said deputy mayor A. Clark Buswell.

While political passions ran high as recently as a year ago over the issue of all-terrain vehicle use in the city, and again over signage in the city, city officials have struggled to find volunteers to attend task force meetings on the subject.

Mayor Bert Cottle ultimately went door-to-door to recruit people to address the ATV issue, which contrasted sharply with standing-room only city council meetings on the subject.

Ultimately, city council members appeared to side with the business owners.

“My first reaction, I’ll be honest with the business owners, was ‘They’ve been talking about this for quite a while. Where were you?’” said Gretchen O’Barr. “Then I thought, you know, they’re here now.”

Businesses said the public notification process for the district wasn’t sufficient.

“The comprehensive plan and the downtown area plan had a lot of public input, but the downtown overlay district had four planning commission meetings and the notification was before the last one,” said Beth Wright, an accountant.

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.