The planning commission passed a resolution Thursday to allow for an apartment in the old Elbow Room property in downtown Unalaska.

The conditional use permit goes to the owners of the building, a ministry group known as Alexandria House. They already have a commercial use permit for the first floor; now, they hope to put a tenant on the second floor.

The commission voted three to zero to grant the permit. Commissioners Chris Bobbitt, Doahn Tran and Vicki Williams were present.

Bobbitt said the new permit is worded exactly the same way as one they gave to a previous owner about a year ago.

"Standard accepted planning practices state that if you grant something for one owner on the same property, you should grant it for the other owner," he said.

But he also noted that the building, at 28 N. 2nd St. off West Broadway, has a history with the commission -- and a history of drawing concern from neighbors.

The building was once the Elbow Room bar, later known as the Latitudes Bar. Alexandria House bought the property and asked the city for a permit to open an emergency shelter there in 2009. The planning commission denied that request. The building changed hands in 2010 and was owned by Jack Sternhagen, who used the same conditional use permit to set up a residence. The house has been vacant for the past year. Now Alexandria House owns it again.

Chris Honan is an Unalaska police officer who helps run Alexandria House. He said at the meeting that this time, they want to use the property to finance their other shelter projects. And he initially said that they might want to use it as a shelter if they didn’t have a tenant in the apartment.

"What we do for the community is that people who are stranded, they miss their flight or they get released from jail, they have no place to go, we take care of those people," he said. "So there could be instances where we find a place for those individuals to go until they can get out of town or whatever the situation is."

But he says they don’t allow drugs or alcohol -- meaning a drunk person who came looking for shelter would be turned away into the neighborhood.

"Unfortunately, if they do show up drunk or something, we’ll just have to put them out and they’ll end up walking the street somewhere, because there’s no other facility that the city provides that would take care of them if they don’t have money or a place," Honan said.

That’s the sticking point for Suzi Golodoff, who lives next door to the property. She’s led the opposition from neighbors since 2009. She says the bar patrons at the Elbow Room were a nuisance for her neighborhood, and she thinks a shelter would be too.

"You’re just gonna have sober folks there and if they’re too messed up to stay there, you’ve just invited them into our neighborhood," she said to Honan during public comment at the meeting. "You haven’t invited them into your house, or your neighborhood. You’ve invited them into my neighborhood."

Honan later clarified that they would not use the property for shelter -- only to generate revenue to put shelter-seekers up in hotel rooms, or for other operations. He says they’re already using part of his brother John Honan’s apartment as a shelter, near the Unalaska Christian Fellowship.

Bobbitt warned that it could cause trouble with the city if Alexandria House did want to run a shelter operation at the property, under the permit they were asking for.

"Since it’s worded the same, the use is the same, so the temporary dwelling for a night or a couple of nights isn’t really allowed within the use that you're applying for a variance for," Bobbitt said. "If we grant this variance, there would be some enforcement issues that might come up."

But planning staff member Anthony Grande says it’s not exactly against code to let people stay in a house for a night or two without charging rent. He says the code doesn’t even mention emergency housing. That means it would come down to whether the property was a nuisance, unless the city changed its code.

With the new permit in hand, Chris Honan says they have a lot of remodeling to do before they can try to rent the place. He’s hoping they might be ready by next summer.