New generation provides new hope to save historic theatre

Has Anchorage grown up enough to save our most historic and architecturally interesting building? Maybe. A new generation has taken up the cause of the 4th Avenue Theatre.

A year ago, the Anchorage Assembly had given up on this opulent art deco gem and national historic landmark, boarded up for years, and accepted an absurdly vague and grandiose development proposal that would have rewarded a developer for demolishing it with $38 million in tax breaks.

In May, Mayor Ethan Berkowitz rejected the application from Peach Investments for those tax breaks. Owners of Peach Investments, the Fang family, have not said what they will do next and did not return my call for comment.

[City denies $38M tax break for proposed 4th Avenue Theatre redevelopment]

But on Sunday at noon a group of young musicians plan to play on the sidewalk in front of the building, an event their Facebook page calls a "Funeral for the 4th Avenue Theatre." Organizer Michael Howard is too young to have seen a movie in the theatre and barely remembers seeing a tourist show there before the Fang family bought it in a foreclosure sale in 2009.

"I'm not purporting to be a history buff on it. I just know it's a cool building," he said.

Howard is a traveling musician. I caught up with him between sets in a restaurant in Cooper Landing. His generation of Anchorage-grown young people seems to have different values than a downtown booster crowd that was eager to buy a half-baked promise of riches in exchange for destroying something irreplaceable.

"It's a newer generation, younger folks, and we're bringing our desires to have a nice place to live," Howard said. "We visit these other cities with arts and culture and historic buildings and you come back to Anchorage and it's sad."

Robert Gottstein, who saved the building once before, said he had no part in Howard's event, but he is happy about it and plans to attend. He organized a demonstration for the theatre last year and gathered $100,000 in pledges to save it online, but dropped the effort when the Assembly voted for the Fangs' proposal.

Gottstein, whose father, Barney Gottstein, made a fortune in grocery wholesaling and real estate, bought the building out of foreclosure in 1991 and says he put $3.5 million into it, bringing it up to code and operating it as an event space and tourist attraction. He said he made money running it that way, but lost control of the building when he put it up for a loan to buy a television station, an investment that went bad.

Peach Investments bought the building from Gottstein's lender for $800,000 plus back taxes and debts that brought the total cost to $1.65 million. The building then sat for six years until the Fangs' audacious proposal for the huge tax break, which they linked to a promise they would tear down the vacant Northern Lights Hotel in Midtown (a promise they have been making since 2006).

[Derelict Anchorage hotel plays pawn in developer's quest for rich tax breaks]

The linkage of the two buildings smelled of extortion. The derelict hotel on Northern Lights Boulevard is a disgraceful and hazardous eyesore. Berkowitz next week will ask the Assembly to pass an ordinance to require registry and standards for abandoned properties as a first step to dealing with such blight.

As currently managed, the hotel wouldn't meet the standards, which require vacant buildings to be fenced and secured against entry and the weather and to be clean and free of graffiti.

(A city spokesperson told me, to my amazement, not many people have formally complained about the Northern Lights Hotel, making it more difficult for the city to act. Let's fix that. You can file a complaint and send a picture to the Mayor's Office or "Code Enforcement" by clicking the Anchorage Works link on the municipality's website. Make sure to note ways which the building is dangerous and unsecured.)

Advocates of the tax breaks claimed the 4th Avenue Theatre was also too far gone to save, like the hotel. But Ira Perman toured the building at the time and said the interior is dusty but in good shape.

The building had been reroofed and the mechanical systems are operable, Perman said. He provided pictures to prove his point—ghostly images from a dark, dusty place in which the gold of the walls gleams like a treasure.

"Contrary to what people say about this building, it's really just that exterior marquee that's a mess. But inside, it's in remarkably good shape," Perman said. "It wouldn't take that much to bring that back."

Perman's opinion is worth something, because he is executive director or the Atwood Foundation, which manages the philanthropic legacy of the former Anchorage Times publisher, Bob Atwood and his wife Evangeline.

"It is something I will be talking to the board members individually about," he said. "It makes sense, because we're there to support the things that Bob and Evangeline cared about, and I can't help but believe they'd be beside themselves to think it was going to go under the wrecking ball."

Gottstein got a legal opinion that said the state could use eminent domain, also known as condemnation, to take the property. Gottstein suggested a threat to take the property as a way to get the Peach Investments to negotiate a sale using private money.

Berkowitz told me he doesn't believe in using condemnation for something like that, but said the municipality could use its other real estate assets to buy the property, as it commonly does.

Nothing like that is in the works now. Saving the theater would take new energy and leadership. But that energy may be gathering.

"I sense that the sentiment is there to preserve it," Perman said. "Ironically, the people who spent their time making out in the back row are getting too old now. And now it's up to people like you and me, and the people who care most strongly about it are the young people. . . And that's great. It's their building. This is their town, because they're the ones who will be living here."

Charles Wohlforth's column appears three times weekly.

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