Kenai’s city council on Wednesday authorized a rezone for 13 parcels strewn around the city that had for various reasons been assigned multiple zone designations.
Alex Douthit sponsored an ordinance unanimously enacted during the council’s Sept. 3 meeting — and also was approved by the city’s planning and zoning commission on Aug. 27. He said that he noticed the issue of “weird split” lots when working on a separate rezone earlier this year. He credited the city’s planning department with identifying and describing corrections for each of the examples presented this week.
Kevin Buettner, Kenai’s planning director, said that “irregularities” on the city’s zoning map were created as parcels were merged or new zones were created. That’s a challenge, he said, because it’s unclear which zone would supersede another — “that’s not gonna be easy for developers to overcome.”
The objective of the ordinance, Buettner said, is to ensure each parcel in the city is only designated under one zone. The modifications also better group zones in ways more intuitive for development, he said.
The city contacted owners and neighbors of all 13 parcels rezoned this week, Buettner said, and heard no opposition to the changes. The changes include rezoning, to light industrial, parcels occupied by Homer Electric Association, U-Haul and the Kenai Peninsula Youth Facility near Marathon Road. Each of those were split between industrial and either commercial or conservation zoning.
Another change includes rezoning multiple lots like the location of Peninsula Memorial Chapel to either general or limited commercial — Buettner said lots were merged and the zoning wasn’t changed leaving them in part erroneous. The ordinance also calls for setting some parcels around the airport to airport industrial, changing the parcel occupied by the new Boys and Girls Clubs facility to urban residential and rezoning the city dock area to working waterfront. The large area west of Bridge Access Road and north of the Warren Ames Memorial Bridge is newly classified entirely as conservation zoning.
Some changes may only be temporary, Buettner said, as private owners or the city decide how to develop their parcels, they could be rezoned again later.
“Hopefully moving forward we catch these before they become a problem again,” Douthit said.
A full recording of the meeting, including a presentation by Buettner on each of the changes, can be found at Kenai.city.
Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.
