New Hotel Rises in Midtown

New hotel as seen from 36th Avenue.

 I usually don't care to report on suburban style hotels that are under construction as Anchorage has seen more than enough of these unoriginal and often straight-up ugly buildings being built over the last 20 years. I'm not about to write that this project here is an exception, but rather I just wanted to point out two positive attributes that this project carries. The first thing I want to note is that this building will not have the same tiresome slanted roof and beigetone colors. That said, a quick Google search for Aloft shows me that this will be a clone of every other Aloft hotel in the mainland United States. The architecture is refreshing for Anchorage standards, but not really original. But I do appreciate that this hotel will be close to the street. Placing buildings right up to or near the street helps to give the street definition, and an area like midtown is definitely in need of that. 

Plaza 36 as it looked in 2002 and in 2020 (right).

The other point that I appreciate about this project is that unlike all previous chain hotels in Anchorage, this will be the first to involve redevelopment. Instead of being built on vacant land, the Aloft hotel will replace a large strip mall that has sat at the corner of 36th Avenue and C Street for decades. Upzoning to a higher density is almost always a good thing, and it is actually just the continuation of the story that has played out in this part of midtown for the last 20 years. Until construction of the 10-story ASRC building in 2002 kicked things off, the site was home to a trailer park, a go-kart track, and the aforementioned strip mall. Four low-rise buildings and the 14-story JL Tower have since been built in the area. It is actually quite an uninspiring site of single-use office buildings surrounded by a sea of asphalt. At night, it is a complete dead zone. Amusingly, the hotels developers, who are the same developers behind the rest of the office park, say that hotel guests will be treated to live music on Friday nights. I'm sorry to say, but unless surrounding areas both within and outside the office park dramatically change, this area of town will never be "cool" with both guests and residents. 

While it is unfortunate to see the land developed in such an unattractive car-centric style over the last two decades, the addition of the hotel does eliminate the last low-density building in the area and brings everything up to a higher level of density. Also, a hotel will mean there will technically be "residents" staying overnight, thus making this office park "mixed use"; but that might be too generous of a bestowing.