Sutton becomes SPUD

PALMER -- Thirteen miles up the Glenn Highway from Palmer is the town of Sutton -- one of Mat-Su's smallest and most tucked away communities.

Drivers whizzing by on the Glenn see a gas station, a bar, a general store and cafŽ, a shiny fire hall and assorted residences. Home to about 1,000 people, it's a quiet valley carved along the Matanuska River and tucked between the Talkeetna and Chugach mountains, criss-crossed with creeks, rivers and trails. Yet, many folks think of Sutton as a dot on the road heading to somewhere else.

But Sutton's residents see their town differently -- a community deserving to be protected and preserved from the wrong kind of progress.

Sutton is the Valley's newest community to become a SPUD, or a special land use district. It's not zoning, per se, but rather a land plan that limits how and what new development comes to town. SPUDs, along with their companion comprehensive plans, are tools that locals can initiate and create to try to protect their neighborhoods' character and charm from dangerous or particularly offensive land uses. The Mat-Su Borough Planning Department helps residents put together such plans and later oversees compliance.

Last week, the Mat-Su Borough Assembly agreed to codify the work of the town's planning committee, who have labored up to this point for close to eight years.

"It took a while, but we hung in there," planning committee member and resident Chris Rose said. "It's a relief to have our community plan in place with some teeth in it and to know future development that could negatively impact Sutton will go through a permitting process."

Sutton's plan makes certain uses subject to new procedures overseen by the borough planning department. Things like box stores, towers taller than 50 feet, electric transmission lines, heavy industrial uses, junkyards and racetracks will all require a developer to publicly announce his plans and submit to a public hearing before the borough's planning commission will consider granting a conditional-use permit.

And certain uses are prohibited outright. The SPUD excludes new facilities housing convicted criminals by disallowing maximum-security prisons, halfway houses and court-ordered alcohol and drug treatment centers. Sutton is already home to the Palmer Correctional Center, a minimum- and medium-security prison tucked into the hillside west of town.

"It's a pretty typical special land-use district," Borough Planning Director Sandra Garley said Friday. Each of the 20 or so communities that have these plans have individually identified the land uses that are of special concern to them and incorporated them into their own plans.

Sutton's planning process was lengthy in part to allow the residents working on it to educate themselves and each other and allay fears about land use regulation generally, according to Rose.

"The concept of the plan was controversial in and of itself," Rose said. The locals did not want to overdo it and rejected some ideas, such as minimum lot sizes, as going too far. They also spent time keeping everyone informed of the plan's progress.

Garley said the Sutton plan was probably a success because the planning committee took the time to introduce the idea of drafting a comprehensive plan to the community.

"We [at the borough] were impressed by their effort. At one point, they went door to door to do a survey to determine what people wanted," Garley said.

And Rose says the SPUD hardly marks the end of Sutton residents planning for their town's future. The planning process also gave residents a chance to talk about important issues the community isn't quite ready to regulate. For instance, many participants recognized the importance of someday having separate motorized and non-motorized recreation trails.

"It didn't get codified, but there was consensus that this distinction is necessary," Rose said. He anticipates the SPUD and comprehensive plan will continue to evolve over time.