The Haines Borough Planning Commission recommended rezoning land at Jones Point from heavy industrial to industrial light commercial to accommodate landowners’ plans and allow for future industrial uses, but the borough assembly June 12 mostly indicated support for the property owners’ original request for a rural mixed-use zoning.
Takshanuk Watershed Council Executive Director Meredith Pochardt said the organization is willing to accommodate the commission’s industrial light commercial zone, but borough code would need to be amended. “There are several things with the industrial light commercial that still don’t allow us to do on the property what we want to do,” Pochardt said at the planning commission’s June 14 meeting.
The nonprofit plans to develop trails and agriculture for educational purposes as well as build seasonal employee housing.
The commission voted unanimously to change all heavy industrial lands in the area, including Takshanuk Watershed Council’s property and the borough-owned ballfields on Sawmill Road, to industrial light commercial.
A month earlier, the planning commission denied a request by the watershed council and Professional Property Management to rezone about 60 acres on Sawmill Road, including Jones Point, from heavy industrial to rural mixed use.
The commission wanted to keep some heavy industrial land available close to town, said commission chair Rob Goldberg.
Goldberg said industrial light commercial is a good compromise because heavy industry is still allowed with a conditional use permit. “The uses of light industrial I think are broad enough to accommodate all of the things the property owners want to do there and have the borough retain the area as industrial, but we have to make these code changes to make it all work,” Goldberg said.
The borough assembly heard the issue June 12 and it could come up again at its June 28 meeting.
Assembly member Heather Lende, liaison for the commission, said June 14 the assembly would like to see the watershed council and other property owners use their property as they want. “The assembly’s sentiment is to be responsive to the landowners,” Lende said. She said the assembly also discussed the value of the Jones Point property for residential use, as well as other heavy industry outside the townsite like Southeast Roadbuilders, and mixed uses such as plans to place a biomass boiler on Main Street.
Lende said she liked borough planner Holly Smith’s idea of temporarily lifting zoning restrictions so the watershed council could do what it wanted, and then the classification would return to heavy industrial. “That seemed to be a good compromise without actually changing the zoning,” Lende said.
Commissioner Sylvia Heinz said heavy industrial zoning is supposed to protect for those uses, but lands currently zoned that way are not used for industry. “If we keep rezoning it as light industrial to accommodate certain uses, then we’re not doing what heavy industrial zoning is meant to do, which is to protect.”
Heinz, who went along with the rezoning recommendation to light industrial as a compromise from mixed use, questioned whether Haines is doing enough to provide for industry. “What do we support, as an assembly and as a town? If we’re going to take away heavy industrial, it’s probably worth looking at where we might want to put it back.”
Commissioner Jessica Kayser-Forster said she agreed the planning commission is not doing what it should to protect heavy industry. Even if a company applied for a conditional use permit for heavy industry in a light industrial zone at Jones Point, they would likely get pushback on their application.
Commissioner Donnie Turner said the property should remain heavy industrial but he felt forced by the assembly to vote for industrial light commercial.
“I’m frustrated to be strong-armed into doing bad planning because the assembly will just change it all to rural mixed use. … I don’t think changing it from heavy industrial to light industrial is good planning.”
Goldberg said he agreed, but compromises were needed. “There’s a time for idealism and a time for pragmatism.”