4th Avenue Theater: Sold

Late last week at a courthouse down the street from the theater, the Lathrop Building which was held by Northrim Bank on foreclosure from Joe Gottstein was sold to Peach Investments of San Francisco. Since early in the decade, Peach had been interested in purchasing the theater with speculation that it wanted to convert the basement of the theater into a fitness center while the parcel of land directly behind the theater between the Key Bank (also owned by Peach) and First National Building on 5th Avenue would give rise to a 20+ story mixed-use building. As you probably know, the theater has been through a circus latley with the city, private foundations, its owner, and the bank all getting involved in these last few years as the theater changes hands once again since Gottstein bought the building in 1991. The theater itself has been out of operation since the 1980s and since then has played occasional host to your typical banquet, fundraiser, whatever. Preservationists, and rightly so, are concerned about what will happen with the building under the new ownership. I personally think the building will be taken care of under Peach, but we'll see what happens. One good thing about the theater being out of the hands of Gottstein is that with a much wealthier owner, the theater may see some serious TLC and aggressively seek opportunities to hold events or tenants. After 20 years under Gottstein, the theater seemed to be in a pergatory with nothing major happening. In fact I think we might be seeing action already taken as the front doors to the theater have been boarded up. I can't say for sure that the new owners are the ones responsible for this, but as someone who goes by the theater almost every day, I do know the wood was certainly not there a week ago. Earlier this year one of the display windows to the theater was shattered and remains with no glass.

BTW Peach Investments is indeed the same group behind the beautiful mixed-use 188 WNL tower on C Street between Benson and Northern Lights over in Midtown. I think this is why I don't feel too concerned about Peach being the new owner. Besides 188 WNL, the proposed Peach Tower behind the 4th Avenue Theater would also be a mixed-use building that is a level above the rest of the highrise inventory here in Anchorage. Mixed-use buildings are important in that they help foster street life by offering retail and other services on the bottom floor for the residents and/or the office workers above. Many of our highrise offices such as the ConocoPhillips building, or the new JL Tower don't offer that, and as a result their immediate surroundings are dead of pedestrian activity. Mixed-use buildings have surged in popularity, and in some cases mandated by city governments as they all contribute to more efficient economics. The proposed Augustine Energy Center for 6th and G Street will also be mixed-use as well as proposed Town Square Center on 6th and E. But I digress. What I'm trying to get at is that those who understand the need for mixed-use buildings usually come from the same school that embraces the concept of refurbishing warehouses and historical buildings into lofts or other uses. If you've been in a relatively big city in the lower-48 in the last few years, chances are you've seen many of these conversions taking place (many small cities are also seeing this happen). The idea of demolishing a historical building in place of a parking garage or a modernist bland building was a Robert Moses philosophy that flourished in the mid 20th century and peaked in the 60s with the demolition of New York's Penn Station. City planners have since learned from the mistakes made during that 50s-60s period and we're now continuing further into the Jane Jacobs philosophy. Of course we can never be sure that the theater will be saved, and people should be on the look out no doubt; but I hope and suspect the Lathrop Building is in good hands.

Creekside Town Center - Muldoon

With what seems like a week now of nothing but cloudless skies and sweltering temperatures flirting with the 70s (quite unusual for late April-early May), I decided to do some cruising around town and went by Muldoon which besides being home to the new Tikahtnu Commons, is also home to the Creekside Town Center -- a project I admittedly forgot about and thought it was for whatever reason put on hold [edit: turns out it was put on hold for a few years]. Mark Pheiffer, the guy behind the controversial Downtown parking lot deal and hopeful developer of the Augustine Energy Center teamed up with Jerry Nesser (of Nesser Construction Inc., of course) to build a pedestrian friendly "town center" that would be home to a mix of retail and various types of housing. Since Pheiffer's announcement back in 2003 about his plans, some of the footprints for the project have been spoiled as GCI, Walgreens, and soon Wal-Mart have developed sections along DeBarr Road with status quo developments that aren't consistent with the Creekside Town Center standards. Still, the majority of land on the south side of DeBarr was eventually bought and is in the middle of construction as we speak.

Despite my very skeptical predictions for this development, my visit to the completed portion of Creekside made for a pleasant surprise to myself. Upon driving down the main avenue leading into the town center, the houses that face the street have no driveway nor a garage. In its place is the classic appearance of porches, stairs, and entrances that lead to a path separated from the roadway. There's not a snout-house in sight. Away from the main entrance are units that face each other with what looks to be a future stream of water that will someday run between the homes along with picnic tables and barbecue grills to the side. Though Creekside is just beginning to get its trickle of tenants, it's easy to visualize the neighborhood residents out by the stream with the barbecue going on a hot summer evening. Architecturally, it seems there is not one house alike as the facades of the homes stay diverse so as to make the area feel more genuine and not look like a giant subdivision that was built overnight. I'm very aware of the criticism of Disneyfying with the faux-historical architecture, but I think I'd rather see more Disneyfied neighborhoods like these than what we see elsewhere in the city. As for the garages and driveways, they're there -- they're just placed in the rear.

Anchorage's bike plan unveiled

The city has released more than you could ever want to know on the recommendations set out by the Anchorage Bike Plan. Major proposals include bicycle lanes along A/C Streets from O'Malley to Benson, a bicycle lane on Northern Lights Boulevard from LaTouche Street down to Postmark Drive at the airport (along with a lane going down Postmark Drive itself), a connection uniting the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail with the new bike trail that runs along Ship Creek to Mountain View; and though not officially backed by the Plan, a proposal is made for a bike trail that runs alongside the railroad tracks from Spenard to Huffman. The Alaska Railroad by the way does not support the idea as they plan to increase the speed of their trains to 79 mph. The goal of the Anchorage Bike Plan is to layout a reliable network of bike lanes, shared roads, and trails to accomodate not for recreationist, but rather for bicycle commuters making errands to the grocery store or whatever in everyday life.

One problem with the proposed bike network is its conflict with the plans surrounding Downtown Anchorage. Upon skimming the PDF's, I found that recommendations go against bollards (or knee-cappers as I call them), and discourage bottleneck intersections -- an area where the sidewalk spills toward the street so as to give pedestrians a narrower road to cross. If you've been to Downtown latley, you know this is what they're all about. The bike planners concede however that with speeds in downtown at around 25 mph (and possibly down to 20 mph if downtown planners have it their way), it's better off for bikers to share the roads with vehicles rather than have a dedicated bicycle lane. According to the map though, 9th Avenue along the Park Strip would get a bicycle lane along with Cordova. In the end I'm satisfied with the compromise for Downtown as it is indeed a unique area planning wise.

Links:
Anchorage Bicycle Plan

Proposed Bicycle Network Map

New intersection for Midtown

I talked about this earlier, but now it's actually happening. The intersection of West 40th Avenue and Arctic Blvd is just that -- an actual intersection. Installed right in front of the fairly new Alutiiq Plaza, its best to guess the stop lights that are putting a break to the long 40 mph stretch of Arctic are being added to accommodate the growing workforce that head over to Plaza 36 during the workday where the new JL Tower, Alutiiq Plaza, ASRC building, Centerpoint Financial Center, and coming soon -- CenterPoint West are all located. Before Alutiiq Plaza (seen on the above picture) was built, this portion of W. 40th Avenue didn't even exist; but my have times changed. From what I can recall, this is the second newest stoplight intersection to spring up on an existing road in Midtown in the last couple of years. The way I see it, the more breaks we put to these long stretches of roads, the better as Midtown transitions from suburban outpost to the new city center of Anchorage.

Another good thing about this new intersection -- maybe now motorists previously zooming by will actually notice the unique looking Alutiiq Plaza when stopped at the light.

Prop 6 Passes

Just found out tonight while watching Channel 2 that Prop 6, the transportation and safety bond, extended its lead during the absentee count earlier today and has officially passed with a margin of 352 votes. As you may have heard, the bond was the closest race in this April's Muni election in which the yes vote was at one time barely losing to the no's during election night, then pulled up past the no votes by a margin of 2 votes up until today. Some of the funding, according to AnchorageTomorrow include:

- Construct Facility Improvements with ADA access and other upgrades to existing bus stops and transit facilities ($207,000).

- Replace and upgrade data processing hardware to improve efficiency, accuracy, timeliness and inventory control ($30,000).

- Replace major bus components, acquire Smart Card fare boxes and upgrade operating systems ($101,000).

The Smart Card acquisition is an interesting one which I had not heard about till now. Besides the above, Prop 6 will also replace cardiac monitors on ambulences and fire trucks as replacement parts for current systems are no longer manufactured. BTW as noted by a reader in my previous entry, the rest of the bonds supplied by the Muni and school district took a beating by voters (except road bonds of course) including Prop 5 which involved funding to reconstruct the entrance of the main library.

Prop 5 in Profile: New Loussac Library entrance

As everyone knows by now with all the illegally placed campaign signs lining up the roads across town, everyone and their mother will be on this Tuesdays ballot for mayor, but the mayoral race isn't all that it up for vote next week. Besides our 1600 candidates running for City Hall, Prop 5 for library funding is among the more interesting props up for vote. Besides proposing a new library branch for Downtown (which is awesome), the proposition also seeks funding to totally redo the entrance of the Loussac Library. Gone would be the stairs, the skybridge connecting to the Alaska Collection, and the drive through/drop off. In place of the stairs would be a ground level atrium with a large curtain of glass smartly facing towards the south while the road that goes through the library will no longer connect to Denali but would instead become a circular drop off surrounded by a new plaza that better links the library to the fountain.

Renderings of the new library proposals (PDF)

As for my mayoral predictions, this Tuesday will only be the filtering of the candidates. Failing to reach the 45% threshold, expect Croft and Sullivan signs to remain. As I shamelessly like to continue bringing up, I correctly predicted the outcome of the Assembly races last year (for which Ivan Moore still owes me 100 bucks!), and I'm feeling the outcome for this race too.

You gotta love it

Just like the two previous summers, this summer will see more steel rise into the air over Anchorage. This year, CenterPoint West, off of 36th Avenue & CenterPoint Drive, will rise eight stories into the air next to the JL Tower -- roughly about the same height as the new Dena'ina Center in Downtown. Architecturally, the rendering of the building looks like something from the 1980s, but I suspect this is nothing more than a largley inaccurate artist rendition which is quite common when looking at other buildings in town and how different they look from their original rendering. A 360 space parking garage will be built west of the building, which only makes sense considering I didn't think the people at JL Properties would be able to fit another office building into the sea of asphalt which already gets filled to near capacity with cars during the work day. By the way, in order to handle the growing amount of work force heading to the area, it appears an intersection complete with stoplights will sprout up on the stretch of Arctic Blvd between 36th and Tudor in front of the also newly built Alutiiq Plaza. More good news, I think as we have too many long stretches of roads in Midtown that could use interuptions to tame and slow traffic down.

"The High Cost of Free Parking"

That's the name of the book by UCLA Professor Donald Shoup, which four years since being published is seeing its influence filter into the policies of some American cities, most notably San Francisco. Shoup argues about the misuse of valuable real estate that is given away as "free" parking which causes a cycle that starts with subsidizing parking, promoting driving / decreasing transit ridership, laying more asphalt for expansion, and repeat -- ultimatley winding up with us asking why our cities are so anti-pedestrian friendly and ugly. Anyways InTransition just published a great article on this subject and how some cities are looking at the solutions provided in Shoup's book so as to combat the problem of excess parking.

InTransiton: Putting Parking into Reverse

Fruit Land, err.. Tikahtnu Commons shaping up

The new Tikahtnu Commons continues to slowly but surely shape up as more of the retail stores announced to be in the new development start to put up their signage while doing finishing touches inside. Major retail anchors include Target (open since last Oct), Best Buy, Sports Authority, Kohls, and Lowes along with I think Regal Cinemas. I recall that the developers behind Tikahtnu promised that small local businesses will also have a presense in the new sprawl-mall, but so far the only "small" businesses I'm noticing are Gamestop, and Hard Slab Creamery. The latter I never heard of, but according to the googles, Hard Slab Creamery is a nationwide franchise... of ice cream, I would imagine. As for "Fruitland", who knows... but I do know Tikahtnu Commons now has a new nickname!

But really, I've got to give it to these developers. From the way they sold the project, you'd be convinced that the CIRI backed Tikahtnu Commons would be a progressive "town center" like project with a mix of retail, offices, and other uses in a compact aesthetically pleasing area that would rival the also now disasterous Glenn Square across from the Northway Mall. Instead Tikahtnu Commons is turning out to be a case of a slow and ugly car wreck that in true rubbernecker spirit, we can't help but to keep tabs on and watch as this thing goes further down the incinerator. If this development is suppose to be as trendy as the developers have no doubt been touting for a while, then the 5th Avenue Mall in Downtown must be lightyears ahead when it comes to its progressive utilization of smaller space. Bottom line: instead of coming from the 21st Century, Tikahtnu Commons is a sprawl of retail that comes to us freshly from the year 1959 without any knowledge of our worldwide modern concerns for sustainability, and economics.