Palmer tightens zoning in residential area

PALMER -- After listening to allegations that their government was operating illegally at its Tuesday meeting, the Palmer City Council was able to get down to business and take up the issue of a zoning change for a small part of the neighborhood north of Arctic Avenue.

The petition called for rezoning an area on either side of East Caribou Avenue from R-2 to R-1.

R-1 is Palmer's most restrictive residential zone. It allows only one single-family dwelling per lot. Palmer also has an R-2 zone for so-called medium-density housing, but R-2 allows apartment buildings to have more than four units per building -- with no maximum number of units written into the R-2 rules.

The city council passed the change unanimously, as had Palmer's planning commission on Sept. 20.

The change came as council members and planning commissioners have been holding informal discussions about a city-wide revamp of zoning codes in order to stop an influx of what critics say are rental buildings too large for the neighborhoods in which they are built.

Meanwhile, the apartments keep coming.

Palmer building inspector David Meneses said that since January, the city has issued 25 building permits for rental buldings within the city. Meneses said people sometimes do start projects without researching building codes or applying for permits, but Palmer covers just three and half square miles, so city officials usually find out pretty quickly if that happens.

Meneses said he believes the zoned districts within reach of the public utilities are more attractive for developers than property with less restrictive zoning in other parts of the borough.

"What happens is a lot of the finance companies want a secured water supply and secured sewage system," Meneses said, "so a lot of times it becomes easier to do within the cities."

Both the city council and the zoning commission have been brainstorming ideas for a zoning-code revamp.

Meneses said he couldn't predict when a proposal would finally come. "I don't think it's necessarily a knee-jerk thing that's going on," he said. "I think that the council has been listening to the concerns of their constituents and trying to respond to those concerns. That's what the public process is for . . . it's just one of those things that has to play itself out. "

The residential building boom is Valleywide, if not statewide.

The Alaska Housing Finance Corp. (AHFC) released figures in July that showed it had provided $103.8 million in financing for rental housing statewide in its 2001 fiscal year. That money will help build 2,976 rental units. During the previous fiscal year AHFC helped finance 1,468 apartments.

Tuesday's rezone was not without objection from some neighbors.

Paul Weir and Mary Mullins spoke to the council against the plan. Weir and Mullins are engaged to be married and recently purchased their house, which came with two apartments on the property.

Mullins said the couple shopped for a combination home and rental property, researched the property before they brought it, and planned to invest by adding a duplex or triplex and turning their current home into a single family dwelling. Mullins said she and Weir had been counting on an R-2 neighborhood that remained R-2.

Now that it's zoned R-1, the couple will have to apply for a variance or a zoning change when the time comes to develop their property.

"I think there is a possibility of getting a variance," Mullins said, "but it's very questionable with us -- just because of who our neighbors are, and the experience they've had with the multiplexes."

Bill Scharrer is executive director of Valley Residential Services (VRS), a nonprofit corporation currently building in Wasilla that has also acquired property for two developments in Palmer. Scharrer called the hard looks people are giving zoning rules a legitimate political response.

"People are concerned about high-density housing in their neighborhoods, and so they call their politicians," Scharrer said.

Scharrer said one of the VRS' properties in Palmer is 2.8 acres located between Dolphin Avenue and Caribou Avenue just across the railroad right of way from the area that was just rezoned.

That property is currently in an R-1 zone. Scharrer said he didn't know if VRS would try to have it rezoned, apply for a variance, or develop it with single-family dwellings. Scharrer said VRS plans to keep the existing neighbors in mind, and that he wants all VRS developments to create community. That's one reason VRS builds inside city limits, he said.

"It would be a lot easier and a lot cheaper to find a place out in the toolies somewhere," Scharrer said. "But the result is people with low incomes who have their lives tied to cheap vehicles."

VRS' other property is also along the railroad right of way, just south of Blueberry Street and east of the tracks. That property is zoned R-2, and VRS plans to build two six-plex apartment buildings. Both are planned for people with special needs and both will be operated with assisted living programs provided by other Valley nonprofits.