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| Submitted comments will appear below after staff approval. | |
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| Jennifer Staley | 8/3/2006 1:59:47 PM |
| It is important to me that this ordinance does not cause planning and zoning to be excluded from the process of acquiring additional off-street parking. The new (salvaged) train car at Al's Alaskan Inn is just one case that demonstrates the need for planning and zoning to have a chance to review a business' changes in structure and/or parking that could cause a need for additional parking. I realize that Anchorage's growing need for parking would be affected by this ordinance - and it is better to find effective ways to maximize already existing parking areas than to creat new ones - but consideration needs to be given to how this will affect Anchorage businesses and residential areas that will be affected by the growth of these businesses. In the case of Al's Alaskan Inn, people are saying that this business has outgrown it's location and if it is allowed to continue to expand, current issues like noise and other disturbances will likely continue to get worse. | |
| Mary Pirtz | 7/27/2006 1:45:46 PM |
| I am writing as a concerned south Anchorage resident. Our city has through the years made huge strides to make our city an inviting place to live and visit with the back bone of P&Z. The off-street parking ord.2006-112 as written removes P&Z, where does that leave our residents? This ordinance has come to pass, as it seems by special interest of Al's Bar. Prior to the salvage train being placed in the parking lot, (which is another issue into itself) parking was already over-flowing into the neighborhoods. This in turn has put the burden onto the neighborhood to insure their property and children are safe from the over-indulging patrons that race through the neighborhood,urinate on their private property, loud music,drug use and intoxicated patrons wondering through the streets. This once neighborhood bar seems to have growing pains that the neighborhood can no longer indure. The P&Z must be involved to protect our neighborhoods to insure the safety for our residents. How many patrons can one establishment handle? We have numerous businesses in Anchorage that have similiar parking encroachments into the neighborhoods and we need to insure "all' residents are protected and establishments have proper parking for their patrons. I object to the removal of P&Z in this ordinance the way it is written. Special interest is 'not" in the best interest for all. | |
| Mike Huston | 7/27/2006 8:19:59 AM |
| Ms. Shamberg, please see the correspondence regarding Al's bar
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ossiander, Debbie A." |
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| Mike Huston | 7/27/2006 7:58:59 AM |
| Judy Alderson | 7/26/2006 11:23:31 PM |
| --All members of the assembly need to look carefully at this proposed ordinance to evaluate the impacts it may have in their areas. It appears that this proposal has been drafted to resolve a problem for an individual business owner (Al's Alaskan Bar on Old Seward) without reflecting on the effects it may have in other parts of Anchorage. In attempting to resolve one problem, we often create problems in other areas. --I am concerned about the growth of the business at the corner of 79th and the Old Seward (Al's Alaskan Bar) over the past few years. I have lived on Evander Drive (two blocks away) for 15 years and for many years the business there was a quiet neighborhood type of bar. More recently the business has expanded and the type and numbers of patrons attracted to Al's has significantly changed. With the expansion of the business, it is easy to understand why there is inadequate parking for the attraction that is well advertised (I just heard an ad on the radio today advertising the train car and specials on rum and cokes, etc.) to include 6 bars, karayoke, dancing, and deals on drinks. The solution to this neighborhood issue is not to pass an ordinance that would expand the parking options resulting in allowing more and more patrons into this facility, but rather to work with the Planning and Zoning commission, the community council and city P&Z staff to find a balance between the grandfathered business, the capacity of the specific location and the compatibility of it's location next to a residential neighborhood. --I object to removing the involvement of P&Z through the language of this draft ordinance. --The neighborhood deserves some clear answers and explanations from the city regarding decisions made on permitting the recent expansion to include a train car (arctic entrance?) at Al's Alaskan Bar. There seem to be more questions than answers. | |
| Randall Hill | 7/25/2006 10:37:54 PM |
| As a resident of 79th ave for the past 47 years I have seen the growth of South Anchorage as a kid and later as an adult. I was born literally on the property where I live, my father delivered me much against his will but later delite. Over the past few years as Al's has grown we have had to put up with more traffic, garbage, drug abuse, drunks, and damage to our property. It was not until extreme measures were taken that we were able as a community to get no parking signs put up to clear our street and drive ways enough so that we could return to our residences if we left home on Friday or Saturday nights. Even with the no parking signs we are still harassed by Al's hired goons or security force as they call them selves when we turn onto 79th ave to try and go home, they yell and slap there hands on your cars and tell you you cannot go down 79th because there is no parking. This raises a question to why I am forced to pay taxes and be harrassed in this way. The fact that 79th ave is not a standard sized street, meaning no gutters and very narrow, raises another problem which no one has brought up. Once we get the first snow and later the city plows the the street it becomes even more narrow, now add to the mix the 100 or so people trying to find parking at Al's and trying to funnel past his parking lot all of a sudden you have all of these cars zooming down a narrow street at a high rate of speed. Next comes the noise level because everyone has to have their stereo turned up as loud as humanly possible and you have our typical Friday and Saturday night. By allowing Al's to use the parking at the Alpine Building you open the door to even more people driving up and down our street. If you allow this ordinance to pass Al is just one step away from using a second piece of property which is right behind Joyce Munson's home that has a access road that also comes out on 79th ave. If the ordinance passes wont he be able to use this as off street parking too? If so he can add another 100 parking spots that would be close to 550 or 600 patrons he could have in his bar, now just stop and imagine the level of noise, would you want to live anywhere near a place like this. My wife Denice Hill and I are using our computer to send this message for our neighbors who are all over 70 so are not really into computers. Harold and Elizabeth Weber, 820 East 79th ave. Donnald and Mary Kranz, 875 East 79th ave. We all live less than 1/2 block from Al's bar, if we do not get a vote in this who does? | |
| Dick Odgers | 7/25/2006 9:56:45 PM |
| I oppose this ordinance. This opens the door for other businesses to outgrow thier parking areas and flow into unsuspecting neighborhoods. We do not stand alone, those who live near the Bear Tooth and the Mooses Tooth are experiencing the same affect that those behind Al's Bar are experiencing. | |
| Joyce Munson | 7/25/2006 9:51:51 PM |
| I oppose the parking ordinance, case num. 2006-112, entitled off street parking. I live on the adjacent lot to Al’s Alaskan Inn and this is a prime example of what can happen if this ordinance is enacted. For the past 5 years as the ownership of the bar and motel was transferred from father to son, it has been transformed from a motel and neighborhood pub to a club with 6 bars. An agreement was recorded between the owner of the bar and the Alpine Building owner for shared parking but no variance was asked for even though the building was located across 79th Avenue. The neighbors did not realize this was illegal. As his expansion grew the problems continued to grow and parking became a bigger issue as well as impacting the neighborhood in all another areas. This over flow is everywhere and the bar owner solved the problem by sending the people across the Seward Highway to park at American Tire Co without an agreement. This encroachment must be stopped. With no oversight from planning and zoning the public will have no recourse except for the police. “What is a Variance: Zoning regulations apply to all property uniformly within the same zoning district. If the regulations were not uniformly applied and special favors were granted to those who applied for them, the administration of the zoning code would become a sham.” | |
| Wendy McKinnon | 7/25/2006 10:08:30 AM |
| I live in the neighborhood behind Al's Bar and very often travel home when there's plenty of activity at Al's Alaskan Inn. There have been a few instances where I have been "rerouted" by the parking lot attendant who won't allow me to turn down E 79th (from Old Seward) because either there are people crossing the street from Al's to the parking area across the street or there are cars turning around in the street or the attendant is helping a patron to get out of a parking spot and is blocking the road to keep it clear. Obviously, as a resident, I should not be waved away by a bar employee with a flashlight just because that bar's patrons are clogging up the area. And I shouldn't have to holler out my window that I live down that road just to get the employee out of the way. To increase the parking capacity in the vicinity of Al's would cause further problems such as this. Can you imagine, if the parking is allowed to increase, how many more people will be crossing the side streets and - worse - the Old Seward Highway? I don't have an issue with a business expanding its clientele if it can handle the increase on its own turf, but it's clear to me that the interest Al's generates has outgrown his property line. Please consider these comments when you are weighing the effects this parking ordinance may have within the local community. | |
| Wanda Dale | 7/24/2006 10:47:13 PM |
| I am against this ordinance and I am against any special permits that allow growth at Al's Bar. In reference to Al's Bar and the "train" on that property, I have watched this bar grow and grow with lack of concern for the residents or neighborhood. With many calls from those who live on E. 79th, residents finally had "no parking signs" installed along the street to help keep Al's Bar patrons from parking on homeowner's lawns, in their yards and across/in their driveways. From 10pm until 3am his patrons are in the parking lot yelling and screaming. They urinate in their yards and toss beer bottles in their yards. Al's Bar patrons race up and down E. 79th Avenue all night long, and at times, gunshots are heard firing off at the bar. With the expansion of the bar and it's relationship to the neighborhood consisting of "young" children, it won't be long before drunk patrons end up assaulting some innocent child or children. I repeat, I am against this ordinance and I am against any special permits that allow growth at Al's Bar. | |
| Janie Odgers | 7/22/2006 6:25:47 PM |
| As the daughter of Joyce Munson, who owns the property directly behind Al's Bar, I spend many weekends with my mother and I have watched as this bar has grown and grown with lack of concern for the neighbors or neighborhood. With many calls from those who live on E. 79th (and myself) we finally had no parking signs installed along the street to help keep Al's Bar clientele from parking on our lawns, in our yards and across our driveways. From 10pm until 3am his clientele are in the parking lot(s) hollering and raising cane, they are urinating in our yards, tossing beer bottles in our yards, knocking down mailboxes (recently the statute in my mom's yard was backed over)and racing up and down E. 79th Avenue. The last time I called the police it was because of 3-4 gunshots fired! This ordinance reinforces an agreement that is already between Rod Udd and Al Choy that is unfortunate for the property directly behind Mr. Udd's property - an apartment complex with working families and children (there is no fence between these two parking lots to protect their property from the drunks at all hours of the night). From what I can tell this ordinance not only allows Al's Bar to expand beyond his capacity of proper parking but also opens it up to everyone in the City to overflow into any adjacent (or near) parking lot. So existing businesses can continue to grow even though they do not have sufficient parking, which impacts neighbors (be it a neighborhood or a neighboring business) without any regards to controlled growth. Now if you are a new business you have to have proper parking spaces! Al claims he has 27 employees, 20 motel rooms and 400-500 bar patrons a night. Seems he would have to have 47 dedicated parking spaces just for employees and motel guests, then how many does he need for the bar patrons? This is a nice neighborhood. E. 79th has people living in these homes that have lived there for 50 years, or their children or grandchildren have bought the homes and now live in them - my husband and I were planning on doing the same with my moms home - but maybe we should just see her sell out for the noisy bar can expand and ruin the whole neighborhood. If you have watched the progress of this project, a stop work order was in place a few weeks back (I just happened to be in town) when he brought in a crane company to go ahead and put up the train. It was a late Friday afternoon when the cranes started to arrive, when we went and quizzed the guys they said that they were hired to put up the train the following day. When we called the crane company they said they didn't know anything about a stop work order and that they were hired to do a job. We then called the Muni enforcer who came out to see what was going on and they told us if he started to put it up to call the police (the permit was missing from the train) we stated that without that permit in place on the train why would the police believe us. So they called and another person brought out a stop work order and finally with many more phone calls on my part put it back up. The crane company shut down and left. Now they are busy painting it! I am against this ordinance and I am against any special permits that allow growth at Al's Bar - he definitely is not a respectful neighbor! | |
| Janie Odgers | 7/22/2006 5:45:00 PM |
| jeffry schmitz | 7/21/2006 9:11:21 PM |
| I have concerns with the manner in which _*AO 2006-87*_ seeks to address the issue of "Joint Use" of a non adjacent parking facility; I see what the concept is but at first blush a few things leap out here - Al's Alaska Inn case being somewhat of an example of why not to go forward. An ordinance change gives him a parking space blessing here but not a lot else..It would be likely logical to think that since he has an existing agreement with Rod Udd that it is already being used and there are still problems persisting. The adverse impact issues remain due to a venue that is inappropriate in the first place for the clientèle loading and neighborhood. I also have the following concerns regarding the proposed change per AO 2006-87: 1. P&Z is _excluded from this amendment process_ by AO 2006-87 Sec 2, (Excluding P&Z from reviewing this amendment). That in and of itself takes out a set of checks and balances and bothers me for the reasons below. If I as a layman citizen have the concerns I do, what does P&Z with experienced, knowledgeable professionals have to say about it? 2. While I have seen some cases of off premise parking work in practice, using the case of Al's Alaska Inn of noisy, alcohol imbibing patrons for example crossing neighborhood streets to get back to cars makes my eyes dart.... 3. Once you go for non contiguous, you also open the door to remote - I saw no distance limitation in the copy of AO 2006-87 that I read other than a vague reference to Collector Class and unclassified roads. Who and how would decide that the lot referenced is too far away? 4. If you allow for non contiguous parking, where is the upper limit then for the facility size in question? Can we keep adding train cars for example if we find a "joint use" parking lot big enough? My take is that property size tends to limit patron count to reasonable levels. Again referring to the issue at hand, it would seem that the patron count the community can support is also relative to the parking available. 5. Altering existing code creates a "murky layer" to the parking question that would have to be resolved each time the question came up. We already have a real problem getting existing code issues either looked into, resolved, enforced or all of the above. It usually falls to the community to hound these things; the Freds Towing debacle a mile to the North of Al's was a classic case that drug on forever. And he was in extensive, clear violations of his conditional use permit. 6. The removal of AMC 21.45.080 X 3c is another case where code provisions for early problem identification and resolution is removed from the process, transferring it once more to the backs of the community to identify and seek resolution after the permits are issued and the problems are recognized. Bottom line is that this might work in very narrow circumstances (Peanut Farm comes to mind) but it needs to be codified as such and has to have strong community protection built in that does not require a lot of resources to kick in and work. Something along the lines of a conditional use permit that revokes the option if there are significant community problems. AO 2006-87, in my opinion, is much to blunt an instrument to a problem that requires a lot more precision to be fair and effective as intended. It may "address" one problem in the short term but creates others in the long run. Best Regards, Jeff Schmitz Former Chair, Taku Campbell Community Council | |