How Anchorage is trying to kickstart construction on empty land downtown

Through the window of his office on the eighth floor of Anchorage City Hall, Mayor Ethan Berkowitz said, he sees a dispiriting expanse of street-level parking lots.

But in the empty space, Berkowitz said he also sees "blank canvas."

"What I really see is the potential for us to do something that transforms downtown," Berkowitz said in a recent interview at City Hall.  

His view, if not literally, is shared by a lot of other people in city government and business. Downtown should be the heart of Anchorage, Berkowitz said.

Yet, compared with some parts of the city, the 113 blocks of downtown Anchorage's central business district have largely languished, with little to no new development in years and no housing in more than a decade. The most recent big project, the Legislature's Anchorage home, was abandoned when lawmakers moved to Spenard.

Some blame a pattern of sprawl that is siphoning money and energy to Midtown, where land is cheaper. Downtown also suffers from high construction costs, slow permit approvals and fragmented land ownership, city planners and developers say. State highways run through the heart of downtown and along the eastern edge.

The mayor and others say the downtown stagnation affects Anchorage's efforts to weather a state fiscal crisis and brand itself as one of America's up-and-coming cities.

Berkowitz, who took office in July 2015, campaigned on invigorating downtown. He doesn't shy away from outside advice, and about a year ago, two consultants from Smart Growth America, a national nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., flew to Anchorage to run a workshop on business development.

The report that came out of the workshop, dated almost 12 months ago, observed the obvious strengths of downtown: the gorgeous backdrop of the Chugach Mountains, the headquarters of major Alaska Native and private corporations, art galleries and a well-regarded museum. An extensive trail network and upscale residential neighborhoods lie immediately to the south.

But the consultants, Chris Zimmerman and Alex Hutchinson, saw the ugly parts as well — surface parking lots, harsh building frontages and loading docks.

The findings led to nearly two dozen recommendations that touched on outdoor tables, safety problems and local control over state roads.

One idea particularly stuck with Anchorage city planners and real estate managers.

"Start by getting a few really good blocks," Zimmerman and Hutchinson wrote. "One rule of thumb is to achieve a minimum 2- to 4-block sequence that is continuously engaging people walking along the sidewalk."

Like the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle or the East Village in New York City, the consultants suggested homing in on a small target area that now has parking lots. Anchorage could start with its own land to gauge developer interest, Zimmerman and Hutchinson said. The city, under that theory, would have more control over its own land.

"Make sure to fill in the space in the small area, leave no empty 'missing teeth,' " they advised.

Ever since, the Berkowitz administration has been hunting for a few good blocks. At least three sites in the southwest part of downtown have emerged as contenders. 

City planners and real estate managers imagine what's now a rare sight: apartments and condos on top of parking structures, mixed in with shops and eateries.

Housing is seen as especially key, with seniors and millennials the most likely to become coveted year-round residents. The theory goes: If people live downtown, they'll work and shop there, too.

Empty space and parking lots

In an interview last year, Zimmerman, Smart Growth America's vice president for economic development, said it isn't unusual for American cities to have large swaths of empty space covered in cars during the workday.

"But the places people think of as great cities don't look like that," Zimmerman said.

In the United States, cities have expanded outward and focused heavily on car access, creating vast areas of surface parking downtown, Zimmerman said. His report with Hutchinson said the positive parts of Anchorage's downtown could be tied together by replacing surface lots with buildings, both publicly and privately owned.

One person with a mission and vision for downtown is Larry Cash. In 1977, Cash came to Anchorage to take a job as an architect. He moved into a bungalow at Seventh Avenue and H Street. Downtown was crude then, he said, but comfortable: The now-shuttered 4th Avenue Theatre was still in business, and the mix of shops included a drugstore with a soda fountain and a bar called the Monkey Wharf, which entertained patrons with a pen of live monkeys.

Cash moved into a duplex south of downtown after two years. But: "I just fell in love with this place, with downtown in particular," said Cash, who is now the chief executive of Rim Architects, headquartered next to City Hall.

Cash was part of a group that founded the Anchorage Downtown Partnership, which charges downtown business owners for "ambassadors" to clean the sidewalks, help tourists and keep an eye on things. He helped design a number of downtown buildings, including the ConocoPhillips building, the Atwood Center when it was still the Hunt Building, an office building at Fifth Avenue and L Street, the new Covenant House and the Dena'ina Center.

For all his efforts to make downtown more aesthetically pleasing, Cash looks around and still sees too many surface parking lots, too much empty space.

"We've come a long way," Cash said. "And we have a long way to go." He added: "Downtown deserves people who care about participating and making it better." 

His first home, the bungalow on Seventh Avenue, was torn down long ago. Now it's a surface parking lot.

The few good blocks

In the past, city real estate managers have waited until a developer came asking about a city-owned property. But lately, none have been asking.

In 2016, the Berkowitz administration tried a new tactic. The city real estate department sent out bid documents inviting developers to look at the land under the city health department building at Eighth Avenue and L Street. The idea was not a sale, but a trade, for land elsewhere in the city where the health department could be moved.

Nothing has yet come of the health department idea, but officials repeated the process for a city-owned property at Seventh Avenue and I Street, released only a few years earlier from federal restrictions.

There's one restriction for these proposals.

"It has to have a housing component," said Robin Ward, a longtime manager in the real estate department who was recently appointed the city's first chief housing officer through a grant from the Rasmuson Foundation.

Major corporations, like Walgreens, have declined invitations to move retail operations into downtown because not enough people live there, Ward said.

The Anchorage Downtown Partnership, which Cash helped found decades ago, has formally recognized the business need for downtown housing. The organization's board set a goal of helping build 500 new units of housing by 2020, said executive director Jamie Boring. Boring said his organization hopes to position itself as a liaison between developers and the city.

In her career in public real estate, Ward is known for striking creative deals with public properties. Berkowitz has asked her to examine why there isn't more housing being built, and what to do about it.

That task will also involve surveying the Anchorage Bowl for property. Ward expects to interview people who own land that's empty or prime for redevelopment.

At this point, most of that land is downtown, though the ownership isn't easy to navigate. On a single block, there might be five different owners. To find "a few good blocks," Ward and other officials turned first to the easier pickings — land that is publicly owned.

Three spots have become contenders. They are:

* Between Eighth and Ninth avenues and L and K streets. City-owned land is adjacent to property owned by the Anchorage Community Development Authority, which is currently vacant and occupied by food trucks. Next to the health department building, there's a surface parking lot.

* The corner of Seventh Avenue and I Street. In February, officials announced that the nonprofit housing developer Cook Inlet Housing Authority had won the city bid for the land with its proposal for a five-story apartment building with shops at sidewalk level. It's currently a surface parking lot.

* Between Eighth and Ninth avenues and between D and E streets, known as "Block 102." It is now a surface parking lot owned by the state of Alaska.

For Block 102, across from the Delaney Park Strip, the city is acting as an agent for the state. Berkowitz's deputies came up with that idea as a compromise, with the state reluctant to sell or turn over the property directly, said city development director Chris Schutte. Proposals for that property are due Monday.

Roads run through it

National highways typically funnel traffic into major U.S. cities while bypassing downtown areas. 

In Anchorage, the national highway system cuts through the heart of downtown.

The major three-lane roads, Fifth and Sixth avenues, border shops, restaurants, a convention center, a town square, a museum and a performing arts building. The roads also serve as the connectors for the Seward Highway, the Glenn Highway and Minnesota Drive.

Long thought to have been state-owned, a records search for the roads found that the Municipality of Anchorage may actually be the owner, said Shannon McCarthy, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Transportation.

The city and the state now plan to formally place ownership and maintenance of the roads in the state's hands. McCarthy said the state wants to retain control because the roads are an important link in the state highway system.

But what if the state highway system didn't cut through downtown, and instead bypassed it? That's a recommendation in the Smart Growth America report. Zimmerman and Hutchinson suggested that the city acquire state-controlled roadways in downtown and Fairview for redevelopment.

The Anchorage Downtown Partnership drew up renderings of Fifth Avenue as an urban two-lane street, with bike racks and a pedestrian median.

"A 5th Avenue upgrade and new housing would contribute to a more walkable, desirable downtown," Kristine Bunnell, a senior long-range planner for the city, wrote in a November update to Zimmerman.

McCarthy stressed that state ownership of Fifth Avenue would not bar a design overhaul in the future. She said the state tries to work with local communities on such projects.

Still, tensions have simmered to the east over Gambell and Ingra streets in Fairview. Neighborhood activists have advocated for changes to Gambell Street for years, but say they've been blocked by a decades-away state proposal to link the Seward and Glenn highways. Such a link would make it possible to drive from one end of Anchorage to the other without pausing at a stoplight, and could involve tunneling under the Fairview neighborhood.

In her update to consultant Zimmerman, Bunnell noted that in summer 2016, a city-state transportation committee directed federal money to be spent on a study that takes a big-picture look at road projects, including the Glenn-Seward connection, with an eye toward accommodating downtown or people who want a pedestrian-friendly Fairview. Former Assemblyman Patrick Flynn, who proposed the study, cited unknowns about the future of construction or road projects in and around downtown and no plan for blending them.

But that's a long way away. The study won't happen for at least a couple of years, said Craig Lyon, the committee's coordinator.

In the meantime, city officials say, the focus will be more on building up the space between the roads, block by block.