Note: The transcript identifies the meeting date as Thursday, August 6; metadata indicates August 7, 2026. This summary uses the supplied metadata date.
The Community and Economic Development Committee convened to receive departmental updates, hear presentations on two major housing initiatives, and discuss next steps. Director Bob Dole provided a wide-ranging report on demolitions, permits, library repairs, traffic engineering, and real estate activities. The committee then heard a detailed proposal for a land swap between the Municipality, HLB, and the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation (AHFC) to unlock two housing projects. Finally, Member Baldwin Day presented the Missing Middle Housing Opportunity Overlay (MHOP), a zoning tool aimed at accelerating housing production along transit corridors.
Departmental Updates (Bob Dole, Director of Community and Economic Development)
Q&A on Departmental Updates
Land Swap: Block 102 and Tozier Tract (Mike Robins, ACDA)
Q&A on Land Swap
Missing Middle Housing Opportunity Overlay (MHOP) – Member Baldwin Day
Good morning, everyone. I'll call this meeting of the community and economic development committee of Thursday, August 6th to order. And we'll begin with member introductions, George Martinez. And on the line, we have Member Brawley. Yeah, yep, I'm here. Thanks. Thank you, Member Brawley. Any other members? I don't see any, but if there are, please identify yourself. Excellent, thank you. And we'll begin with our regular reports. Just one note. I think that uh note before we begin with our regular reports on the new business. I expect that item C and D, I will skip those today and uh really have more focus on the other uh the other items I think missing Noodle is probably just require a lot of opportunity for uh discussion, and I'll hold those to another meeting. There aren't any objections to that. Then we'll begin with our regular reports, and I'll turn it over to Mr. Dole, who is presenting on behalf of multiple uh departments for the municipality. Good morning, Bob Dole, Director to Community and Economic Development. Uh here on behalf, starting with development services. The most visible items I think you're going to see from this department in the next week is the demolitions in progress at Big Timber and 4626 Tomsky Street. Um these were uh if you go there now, you're going to see uh some trucks and activity there. There's an extensive amount of hazardous material at both of these that have to be removed before we actually do the demolition next week. These are interesting to us. We've probably done about 20 demolitions in the last five years. These are the first two that there's a substantial enough amount of hazardous material there that the contractors came back and uh identified it as a hidden uh problem with the original bid work going forward, but they're going forward on the second line. You see East One TH, that's actually East 11th, referring back to 907 East 11th. We know that property is having a significant impact on the neighborhood. However, uh, we needed to go through certain processes so we could legally take action uh with uh the owner going forward. Uh to minimize challenges with property transfers um with properties that sit on septic systems. You can see development services has identified two new policies it has going forward. We found these extra steps uh in looking at it is not value added, and frankly, the unnecessary cost and delay, which is why policy they were able to waive these case. The new permit system is moving along, and we hope to be doing a demo of that at the C E D C meeting either next month or the month afterward. Right now we're frankly trying to break it in terms of going in and testing in the test environment, the different ones we built to see what really happened, what's really going to do. The Westmark renovation is permits been pulled over already. They've done a lot of demo work. Um, this is exciting because um it was long overdue. Just where it was sitting, it's great for a downtown revitalization to have going forward. Normally, when you do a uh building permit, the building doesn't move jurisdictions on you. That is the building's fixed and the jurisdictions fixed around it. That isn't the case with the South Central Foundation emergency department because the property is transferring from federal ownership to South Central Foundation ownership this month in mid-project. That creates a host of problems in terms of it started permitting under one jurisdiction and finishes up and we'll issue the certificate of occupancy here under another. So you take an 80 million dollar project that's going to grow into 300 million dollars over the different phases that presented some complexity. It took us about frankly two months to work out how we're going to make sure this building meets the requirements for uh building safety that didn't start with our plan approvals. Uh so that's been a challenge going forward. What is kind of exciting, right also on the campus there, and you probably saw it on the way in. The South Central Foundation crisis stabilization center now has a conditional certificate of occupancy. So I think that is a huge uh plus up for our community, just a little biased there, but going forward. Uh staff was uh we were a little thin on Monday. Um our chief of uh plan review and our building official went out to the valley to meet with a couple modular housing manufacturers there. Yeah, one of them has approached us for getting pre-approved plans that will meet our requirements to build inside the uh municipality of Anchorage, and they've already produced 70 homes this year for other places in Alaska.