The saga of the Big Timber Motel, a decrepit three-story apartment building that fronts Fifth Avenue east of downtown Anchorage, has entered a bizarre new chapter.
Former and professed current owner Terry Stahlman -- a man once described by a reporter as a "felon, recovering drug addict, fading strip club kingpin and occasional street philanthropist" -- is locked in a legal conflict with a couple who say they bought the property last year.
Robert and Serena Alexander say they now own the building, located at 2037 Fifth Ave., which was repossessed by the municipality in 2014 over delinquent property taxes.
Filings with the state recorder's office show Stahlman quitclaimed the property to Serena Alexander last year. The Alexanders paid the municipality $81,000 for back taxes and upgrades and repairs the city made to the building.
But Robert Alexander says Stahlman and a handful of other tenants have refused to leave the property, halting work on a planned renovation and costing him thousands in utilities per month. Everyone was supposed to be out by February, Alexander said.
"We were trying to start the remodel and Terry didn't want to leave," he said. "Nor the other tenants."
Now the Alexanders, who operate several Anchorage businesses including the downtown LED Ultra Lounge, have filed in court to evict Stahlman and five other people living there.
For his part, Terry Stahlman says he only sold Alexander a 50 percent stake in the building and isn't going anywhere.
"I've been bamboozled," he said.
While the municipality repossessed the building, he had months to pay back the property taxes and made a deal with Alexander separately, he said. He claims Alexander hasn't abided by that deal.
"He served me with an eviction notice," he said. "How the hell do you evict the owner of the hotel?"
Alexander, he claims, has demolished rooms without permission and even locked Stahlman out of the laundry room.
Two women appointed Stahlman's legal conservators are arguing his case in court.
During a Wednesday status hearing in the eviction case against Stahlman, Anchorage Superior Court Judge Catherine Easter said she couldn't take action until the ownership issue was settled. She cautioned it could take a while and advised all parties to consult with attorneys.
"(Stahlman) is not going to be evicted until we make a determination as to ownership. That's the whole problem," she told plaintiff Serena Alexander. "It won't happen next week. It won't happen one month from now. It will probably be quite some time in the future."
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Stahlman was fielding phone calls from his makeshift apartment at the Big Timber, which used to be the office. Inside, his conservators -- one of whom was a bartender and "house mother" at one of Stahlman's strip clubs -- smoked cigarettes. A jukebox in disrepair sat next to the bed, and a 1970s-era portrait of Stahlman hung on the wall.
Stahlman once owned several strip clubs and made the news for headline-grabbing acts of philanthropy like holding a strip-a-thon for charity or offering the Big Timber Motel up for collateral to free Mechele Linehan, the one-time Anchorage stripper who successfully appealed a murder conviction in 2010. He's still making grand philanthropic promises -- he says that if he were to sell the Big Timber for the $775,000 he bought it for, he'd donate $100,000 to the homeless.
Stahlman is now a frail 72-year-old. He can't walk and is mostly blind, he says. He still has property, but his cash has dried up, he said.
The deal with Alexander at first seemed like a good bet to him.
"He said 'Mama, we're gonna be in the money soon!' " said Carol Hopper, a former Crazy Horse strip club bartender who is now Stahlman's co-conservator.
Whoever rightly owns the Big Timber has an even bigger job ahead of them.
When the city seized the property in January of 2014, inspectors found it infested with bedbugs and shrews, with no heat or hot water.
Only a handful of the two dozen or so tenants remain at the motel, and neither Stahlman nor Alexander claim to know who they are paying rent to. One is a pregnant woman weeks away from giving birth, Stahlman said.
Another is Anthony Butler, who said he moved his collections -- things like miniature helicopters, stuffed animals and jewelry -- out of his room after being threatened with eviction. He started scrawling "affirmations" all over the walls instead, he said. He lives off social security income.
Alexander says his vision for the property is a total renovation. He'd like to see it become a more upscale hotel. The Show Boat Show Club, a onetime 18-and-over strip club attached to the building, could be a restaurant.
But the delay is "wringing him out" financially, he said.