I've been gone for just a bit, but I wanted to go ahead and add the proposed Hotel Indigo development to the record. The project was developed in close cooperation with the Anchorage Community Development Authority (ACDA) and announced to the media in early 2020, just before the pandemic. The 12-story building was to be a mixed-use property with 32 apartment units and space for a restaurant on the ground level, in addition to the 178-room hotel. But what made this project most unique was the nature in which this building was to be built. Modules for each living-space unit were to be constructed in China and barged to Anchorage with each module stacked atop another resulting in a Lego-like rise of the overall structure. Additionally, the parking garage facing 6th Avenue was not to be demolished but rather was to serve as a backbone to the hotel and apartments.
Construction was originally slated to start in May of last year but was delayed following contractual disputes between the developer and the ACDA over scheduling for the temporary removal of the city's transit center. The construction date was thereby moved to August of 2020. However, as of summer 2021 the project has been indefinitely postponed. In other words, it could perhaps be said that this will be another project that will go into the dustbin of projects that never came to be. It also marks yet another failed plan for the problematic People Mover Transit Center. Five years ago this blog covered a previous grand plan which called for a great reduction in transit center space and the addition of a large retail tenant. As a side note, ironically the doomed Hotel Indigo development would have been built across the street from where the Augustine Energy Center would have been built had that project not been cancelled many years earlier.
