Progressives and conservatives find common ground on easing regulations on housing and business development.

By a unanimous 12--0 vote, the Anchorage Assembly voted Tuesday to repeal parking mandates across Alaska’s most populous city.

The common-sense zoning reform found sponsors across the political spectrum, championed by progressive Daniel Volland and co-sponsored by conservative real estate broker Kevin Cross and by Forrest Dunbar, who just won election to the Alaska State Senate as a Democrat. The two other members of the conservative voting bloc on the Assembly followed suit, voting “aye” alongside the liberal majority. (The Assembly is technically nonpartisan, but the political leanings of members are well known.)

There was little debate that parking mandates, which prescribe a particular minimum number of parking spots for every new building in the city, were an unnecessary barrier to building more homes and businesses. Bill sponsors have argued that Anchorage has too much parking, and builders are already incentivized to have enough parking to meet market needs. Development in Anchorage is already notoriously difficult due to the short construction season and high costs for materials and labor, often making the cost of construction more expensive than the potential property value.

“There is broad consensus that can be found around the issue of wanting to support housing in Anchorage to address the housing shortage,”

Volland said in a work session leading up to the vote.

“I think that we have an Assembly committed to doing that.”

Land use codes for the municipality have a big impact regionally: with nearly 300,000 residents, the city is home to 40 percent of all Alaskans. Covering just over 1,700 square miles, it’s the fourth-largest city by land area in the United States and larger than the state of Rhode Island.

Cross, who has extensive experience in real estate and served as Chair of the Anchorage Platting Board campaigned on simplifying permitting. He explained last week that no one was going to remove their parking overnight.

"This is going to be a gradual process as people take advantage of it,”

he said. The flexibility would enable more business opportunities within neighborhoods and revitalize older buildings on space-constrained lots for the select group of property owners who take advantage of it.

“There’s great bipartisan support for these kind of reforms,”

said Dunbar.

“One of my main motivations for this---and for all of us---is we have an affordable housing in crisis in Anchorage right now. This is a modest but important step towards making both new construction, and crucially the repurposing of existing buildings, more affordable.”

Even conservative Mayor Dave Bronson, who has been at odds with the Assembly on other issues, congratulated them on the ordinance. He wrote, “This change will make more housing projects economically viable,” he wrote Wednesday. “I have stated before, there’s no daylight between myself and the Assembly when it comes to the need for housing.”

The planning department walked so the Assembly could run

Anchorage’s parking reform process began with a proposed ordinance from its city planning department. The ordinance included modest reductions to parking requirements and was limited to certain parts of the city. But the election of newcomers Volland and Cross this last spring opened the door to a larger conversation about how the city could remove barriers to new development.

Volland and his cosponsors approached the planning department with a new idea: get rid of parking mandates entirely. Over the last few months, a working group of transportation advocates, Assembly members, and staff from the development services and planning departments extensively reworked the reform.

The Assembly adopted that substitute version of the initial ordinance which eliminated all parking minimums citywide. The ordinance also increased ratios for disability-accessible parking spaces and included m...