Out with snow, in with marijuana: A pot shop might open where this snowboard store is closing

A snowboard and outdoor gear shop in downtown Anchorage is shutting its doors and making way for a potential marijuana retail store.

AK Boardroom, on Fourth Avenue, is closing because it hasn't snowed enough in recent years to keep business afloat and because more would-be customers are shopping online, the owners said.

That opened up an opportunity for an oil industry engineer — who just got a layoff notice from his job on the North Slope — to make plans for a marijuana retail store called Alaska Fireweed.

A trifecta of forces have helped make Alaska Fireweed a possibility: oil prices that have fallen. Snow that didn't. And a coming "green rush" in pot.

Will Ingram, co-owner of AK Boardroom, said that a lack of snow in Southcentral Alaska in the past couple of years has "affected business in a huge way."

"It's pretty tough to hang on," said Ingram. "Winters are dead here in Alaska. I don't blame people on not wanting to go out and spend thousands of dollars on snowboard gear. We've had a pretty good run down here, we're not bummed at all. It is what it is."

They're not alone. The mild winter this year forced some Alaska businesses to adjust, for better and worse. Sales dwindled for some items (think cross-country ski gear) and spiked for others (like fat-tire bikes with studded tires).

AK Boardroom opened in 2008 as a skateboarding and snowboard shop under the name Zak's Boardroom, after then-owner Zak Kaercher. He died after a skateboarding accident in 2010 and the name was later changed to simply AK Boardroom.

Naomi Louvier is the majority owner of AK Boardroom — she also owns Jack White Real Estate — and bought the shop in 2014. Now, she's kind of relieved to get out of the business.

"We had an awesome first nine months, and then it just fell off," she said. "I think the other part of the story is the online shopping now. They'll come in and try things on, but then they'll shop online."

AK Boardroom is tentatively scheduled to close June 30, after selling off its remaining inventory.

On Friday afternoon, teenagers with skateboards strolled in and out while a few customers browsed through merchandise — much of it discounted by 50 percent — to the tune of Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Backpacks, hats and clothes hung under signs boasting the spring blowout sale. Prices for snowboards dropped significantly — one from $360 to $270, another from $580 to $435.

From snowboard shop to pot stop?

The next plan for the store at 715 W. 4th Ave. is to make it part of Alaska's rising commercial marijuana scene.

Anthony Mann, an oil engineer who lives in Eagle River and works on the North Slope, said he got a layoff notice the same day he finalized a lease at the location (the landlord is John Pattee, who also owns the Gaslight bar next door).

He's hoping to open Alaska Fireweed, a retail pot store, with business partner Susan Nowland later this year.

[Here's what Alaska's marijuana bars may look like]

Mann has worked in the oil industry since he left high school, in Alaska for the past few years and the Gulf of Mexico before that. He said the store would be his first business, and he's excited about potentially being one of the early arrivals on the state's commercial marijuana scene.

"Prohibition's ending," Mann said. "Would've been exciting to be around back in the early 1900s when alcohol prohibition ended. Getting in on the ground floor or something instead of copying someone else — really, I'm never going to have this opportunity again."

Mann's last day of work on the North Slope is July 31. Companies are laying off scores of oil industry workers in Alaska as oil prices have slumped dramatically over the past two years. BP in January said it would cut its Alaska workforce 13 percent, or roughly 270 workers. Parker Drilling and CH2M Hill also recently announced cutbacks.

Alaska oil and gas jobless claims also shot up dramatically from March to April.

For Mann, becoming an entrepreneur seemed as good a choice as any.

"It was either not do it, and go job searching and enjoy the unemployment line, or go full at it," Mann said.

Alaska Fireweed is in the process of applying for a license, along with hundreds of other marijuana retailers, cultivators and manufacturing facilities in Alaska.

The burgeoning industry is still trying to answer a lot of questions, like how businesses will handle their finances and how transporting marijuana will work in a state where so many communities are off the road system.

[Two Alaska oil field support companies announce layoffs]

Mann said he had been looking for a location for the store since last summer, and even forwent some other opportunities to get into the marijuana industry.

"I got a job offer last September at Boeing," he said, "and turned it down because of this. It better work. It better freaking work."

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of BP workers to be cut in a workforce reduction. The number is 270 workers.