Achorage's title 21 update: developers want more rewrites, planners want more staff.

• Author: White, Rindi
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Building Alaska

For roughly a dozen years, Anchorage municipal officials, residents, and elected and appointed citizens have been working to develop a new set of rules governing land use regulations, an updated version of Anchorage Municipal Code Title 21.

Ask anyone involved: the process was not always easy. But at long last, the new rules were adopted last year with the caveat that they would launch with a one-year trial period in 2014, during which developers and private landowners could weigh the old and new rules and decide which to use when filing their requests.

To date, most developers choose to use the old rules. For some, the decision may be based on familiarity with the old standards and ease of use. For others, the old rules simply make for a more affordable development.

Developers tend to be opposed to the new rules, which have requirements new to Anchorage, such as "private open space" for non-residential projects or a 10 percent rule for commercial remodels, which states that, for some exterior remodels, 10 percent of the cost of a remodel must go toward bringing an existing building into compliance with the new land use code.

"Small things like that make it harder [to build]," says Shaun Debenham, a principal with Debenham Properties in Anchorage and a director of the Building Owners and Managers Association, or BOMA, of Anchorage. "There's a lot of risk in building a structure. We need a planning department that encourages development."

In October, the Anchorage Assembly approved a request by developers and landowners to extend the trial period through 2015. Although Anchorage municipal employees say the extended trial period is confusing and results in more work for an already overworked staff, those in the development community say the new rules are lacking key pieces--like a user's guide to help make regulations more clear--and that there are holes in the new rules that need to be fixed.

"Particularly in the multi-family housing area, there is still work to be done on Title 21. We've got people right now ready to make investments in the millions of dollars. They are really stymied by what direction they're going to have to take moving forward because, quite frankly, implementation of the new version at this stage makes some of these projects non-economic," assembly member Jennifer Johnston said at the October 7 Assembly meeting where the trial period was extended.

"This is the culmination of an awful lot of work, but we do need additional time. We want to get it right. We don't want people not making investments, or making investments that are not profitable for them or for the community," she continued.

Johnston chairs the Title 21 Committee and has worked on the issue for the past six years.

New Rules Needed to Keep Up with Change

The project to rewrite Anchorage's extensive planning code began in 2002, following adoption of the Anchorage 2020 plan, which called for revisions to the planning code, says Anchorage Planning Manager Erika McConnell.

"The old code ... had been in place since the 1960s," McConnell says. "It has been revised hundreds of times since then but hadn't had a comprehensive review since then."

When the old code was adopted, Anchorage was a different place. Today the city lacks room for major developments and many projects are forced to squeeze into the limited amount of undeveloped land available or to buy developed property and rebuild.

"Anchorage is also a fairly young city, compared to other cities," McConnell says. "The...