Palmer-Wasilla Highway open for business

PALMER -- Two recent commercial rezones near the Palmer-Wasilla Highway west of Palmer have generated controversy among residents and politicians alike.

Property both on the north edge of the highway near Palmer High School and on the south side of the highway near Brittany Estates has been rezoned from R-1, the standard zone adopted for annexed property, to C-G, commercial general zoning, over the past few months.

Both of these processes have rankled local residents, who are against commercial land moving into their neighborhood. Petitions protesting the rezone were circulated in both cases, and also in both cases the city council responded by introducing some means of mitigation on the order of setbacks between commercial and residential land, fences and provisions for access and egress.

Palmer City Council Member Tony Pippel cited the position of these lots on a major highway close to maximum traffic flow and the limited quantity of general commercial land within the city's boundaries as part of the council's justification for rezoning the lands to C-G.

"That's what high-traffic areas are for," he said. "We can't just have a no man's land next to the highway."

Rick Besse with Besse Engineering, who is managing the new construction, said that placing housing developments rather than commercial space next to the highway isn't an option.

"We're sophisticated enough developers to know that you just don't place single-family residential next to a busy highway," he said.Besse said his organization is following through on a development plan for the Brittany area that extends as far back as 1984.

This plan, which was updated in 1999 to divide the area between Brittany and the highway into two tracts, left the northern tract R-1 with the intention of transferring it to C-G in time, Besse said.

"I never got one notice," said Mike Madar, a Brittany Estates resident who opposes the rezoning. "My first notice was when the rezoning came along. The borough never notifies us about anything."

When the plan was updated, it came before the Palmer Planning and Zoning Commission twice and the borough platting board once, all public processes that required notification of nearby residents.

The Planning and Zoning notifications would have been carried out via advertisements in the paper or other media, but the borough mailed notifications to all residents within 600 feet of the affected properties, said Paul Hulbert, borough platting officer. This included everyone residing in Brittany Estates at the time, and many other adjacent landowners.

Hulbert's records show that Madar and his neighbors were all sent notices.

Besse says he has firsthand knowledge of the notifications sent out in 1999. "I know for a fact that they were notified," he said, adding that he himself, as the developer of some adjacent property, received notice of the platting board hearing in the mail.

The plan calls for new development that is no different from that which is already in existence in Brittany, Besse said, and the average lot size of the new subdivision is equal to the average lot size of existing Brittany plots (approximately 7,200 to 10,000 square feet).

Madar said he's not against commercial development, per se. In fact, he acknowledges that the Palmer-Wasilla Highway will undoubtedly see more commercial structures in the future.

Nor does he blame the developer, who, he said, is just out to do his job. However, Madar said that some of the existing Brittany residences wouldn't fit on the new lots, and that he'd like to see some plan for the increased traffic that the development will bring.

Rolf Dagg, the developer handling the Brittany expansion, said he had made every effort to take the concerns of local residents into consideration.

"In the rezoning process, we've certainly listened to public comment," he said. "We really want to be good neighbors."

The land directly to the north of Brittany, which was originally slated to become R-2, multi-family residential, was readjusted to become R-1 following public input at a planning and zoning meeting. This was a concession by Dagg in response to residents' concerns.

Part of the issue is that Palmer's plans for westward expansion have been interpreted in different ways.

"It's really clear that [the comprehensive plan] calls for commercial zoning all along the Palmer-Wasilla Highway," Besse said, adding that the plan notes a lack of certain basic commercial areas within Palmer's city limits.

However, Madar cites the comprehensive plan's statement that only 6 percent of Palmer land that has been zoned commercial has been developed, and said developers should buy land that's already zoned commercial rather than push for a rezone.

Visiting architects from the University of Washington will make a recommendation to Palmer this fall about an update to the comprehensive plan, which Palmer Mayor Jim Cooper names as one of the city's primary objectives before performing another serious expansion.