Don't pave paradise … at least not in Palmer

KATE GOLDEN/Frontiersman reporter

Goodbye, open spaces, historic farms, left turns from the highway and our small-town coziness. Hello, ugly box stores, relentless traffic and urban anonymity.

It's the worst-case scenario for most Palmer residents. But the city's got an ace in its sleeve: a team of 20 graduate students from the University of Washington's urban planning department. They've just finished a five-month project to develop recommendations for Palmer's future from architecture to zoning.

Eighty-five people showed up at the team's presentation Saturday, but nobody was talking about avoiding growth. Instead, they use the words "control," "direct" and "shape."

Wayne Bouwens, an original Colony kid since 1935, waxed affectionate about the farmland. It's the best in Alaska, he said. All we have is that and our history.

"We got to fight to keep all those things, and we got to expand on what we got already," he said.

How shall the fight be waged? The students, armed with big maps and diagrams of Palmer, talked to everyone they could find during their nine-day visit in late January.

"So," they'd say, "tell me where 'downtown' is. When do you feel like you're getting to Palmer?"

Don't know what you've got 'til it's gone

The university team had read the zoning codes and seen the maps. But they weren't prepared for Palmer's serious charm: big mountains, wide-open spaces and a unique historical narrative.

Nor did they expect the swarm of participation from Palmer residents. The city's community and economic development director, Sara Jansen, has the job of implementing whatever plans Palmer chooses. She's looking for "reasonable, practical solutions - that don't cost a fortune."

Palmer people, she said, have the attitude that "'this is our community, our town, and we want to have a hand in shaping it,'" she said. "Oh, they're not shy."

They better not be. As Bouwens noted, "These developers are offering an awful big price."

Tax yourselves and plant trees

Perhaps it's a nearby bench when one is tired, or a single streetlight on a previously dark street. Little niceties can make a big difference to a pedestrian. Students suggested that businesses could pool together to pay for small downtown improvements, creating a "business improvement district."

Such a measure would be up to the business community, not the city, they stressed.

"It would be a more grass-roots way that they could make the downtown a more retail- and citizen-friendly environment," student Joshua Curtis said.

But are business owners willing to tax themselves?

It's something they'll have to mull over.

"We got a lot of nods, and we didn't get any no's," Curtis said. He thinks of it as a way to empower local businesses.

Looks do matter

"It's not how it looks. It's how it works," Fritz Wagner, chairman of the urban planning department and a professor heading the project, said.

Sure, when you're trying to contain suburban sprawl or rework traffic patterns. Landscape architects, who composed the other half of the team, use a more creative process, and they think a lot about how things look. They all talk about "vision," but the landscapers draw it, while the planners find regulations to enact it.

Many of the landscapers' suggestions were function masquerading as form.

They designed a trail system to maximize corridors for both wildlife and walkers. And they designed gateways along the highways, strategically placed trees that would direct eyes toward Palmer and define its entrance.

Walkability is another key example. The team looked at how to bring two long-split core components of the city together with aesthetic manipulation. (Palmer's business area and its historic district even used two different currencies in the early days.) Sight lines on pedestrian pathways, they argued, could lead to the opposite side of town, rendering the core area cozier.

Annexation

Nancy Rottle, professor of landscape architecture on the project, points out that a small-town feel is dependent on not only the cozy core but its relatively undeveloped surroundings.

But the city government has no control over what happens outside the city limits. Annexation is inevitable, she said; the question is in which direction. Many farmers were unenthused about annexation in their areas, which they equated with being swallowed up by the city.

"If [Palmer] wanted to control sprawl Š the only way to do it is to annex," she said.

Major transportation corridors, Rottle and students argued, could benefit from more control. They suggested annexing a stretch along the highway toward Wasilla. They came up with an idea of clustering residential and commercial areas, to create pockets that could sustain themselves while not drawing the commercial growth that should happen downtown.

Out with the old zoning

Zoning codes need major revamping, everyone agreed.

"Right now we have a black-and-white set of rules, and in my opinion you end up with a black-and-white town when you're done," said Darren Hamming, planning and zoning board member and local builder.

Palmer's old-school "prescriptivist" zoning is essentially a list of can'ts that doesn't prepare the town for different kinds of growth.

Council Member Tony Pippel said zoning would be important for keeping the city's expenses in check. "Services like water and sewer are incredibly capital-intensive," he said. "It's cheaper to have more people per unit. Sprawl is more costly."

The student team worked on creating a more flexible, "performance-based" zoning code that lays out what the city wants and provides incentives for businesses to achieve it.

Downtown, the town could try "mixed-use" zoning.

Dan Lucas, who owns the building that houses Fireside Books downtown, has been thinking of building a second floor on the building, renting a couple of apartments with nice views of the mountains - exactly the kind of mixed use students have called for.

"They were talking about dwellings over businesses, and I thought, 'Ah, somebody's finally catching up to me!'" he said.

Save the farms

In the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent a coterie of families to Alaska. Wayne Bouwens' family was among those who took advantage of the cheap 40-acre farmland parcels.

"We came into Palmer on the train. The only thing in Palmer was a flat car for the railroad depot, one little tiny store Š and a whole row of tents that we moved into. There wasn't nothing here."

He's still here, and has plenty to say. Niche farmers deserve to preserve their non-9-to-5 lifestyle. The land is the most fertile in Alaska; it allows us to eat locally and like kings. And history dies when the bulldozers barge in.

High prices from developers are tempting farmers to sell. Bouwens tells them to think of their grandchildren, but he knows that cash talks. And annexing farmland isn't going to save it, since city services are only affordable in dense areas.

As Pippel said: "The power's in the private market. The power's in the dollar, and the dollar gets what it wants, mostly."

The students have a solution. The city could issue a bond, set up a land trust, and get federal matching funds and buy development rights to the farms. Farmers would still be able to work the land, sell it, or play tiddly-winks on it - and they would get paid not to put rows of houses on it.

In some parts of the Lower 48, land so purchased is the only farmland left amid endless suburbia, professors said.

"We've got the chance to do this before the prices go way out of line," Bouwens said.

Now, it all depends on whether farmers go for the idea.

National distinction

There's another possibility for farmland preservation. If the citizens rallied together - and the impetus must come from the community - they could get Congress to designate Palmer a National Heritage Area.

Such areas don't control land use, and ownership doesn't change. The Mat-Su's cabbages are already famous, but the national recognition could spur economic development. And Palmer would be eligible for federal funds to enhance what makes the area special.

Rottle thinks people would visit Palmer to try out farm stays, farm tours, rural bed and breakfasts, and other "agricultural tourism."

"Tourism is not the only strategy, but it could help to support downtown businesses," she added.

Now what?

The recommendations come just as Palmer prepares to update its official vision, the comprehensive plan. Professors and students emphasized that their suggestions should be taken as a "catalyst for conversation," not mandates, and not necessarily immediately necessary.

Planning student Daniel Stanley said "vision" was the most important place to start. "Everything else arises after the community agrees on a shared vision (or some agree to disagree)," he wrote in an e-mail.

It's starting. "There's a lot more heads nodding out there," Pippel noted.

"To be or not to be," Professor Wagner quoted. "Does Palmer want to be? And what does Palmer want to be? I think Palmer can be something other communities can't be. But it's up to the citizens to make the changes."