Anchorage Ends Minimum Parking Requirements

In a landmark vote, the Anchorage Assembly has voted unanimously to eliminate minimum parking requirements citywide. The proposed repeal of the parking requirements united Assembly members on both ends of the political spectrum, as it was championed by David Volland, a liberal, and co-sponsored by Kevin Cross, a conservative with a background in real estate. Mayor Dave Bronson, a conservative who  has often found himself at odds with the liberal-majority Assembly, is also a supporter of the repeal and took to Twitter after the repeal's passing to write that "there's no daylight between myself and the Assembly when it comes to the need for housing."  

The citywide repeal of minimum parking requirements actually represents a major leap forward for the city. Initially, the city's planning department drafted an ordinance calling for parking reform to only certain sections of the city. As this blog has noted in years past, efforts at zoning reform have usually focused on midtown and downtown Anchorage, with some attention also given to creating various "town centers" across the Anchorage Bowl. As the Sightline Institute notes, however, coverage of the relaxed regulations was extended citywide following input from members of the Assembly. 

While this is of course fantastic news, it does not mean that the wide barren swaths of asphalt between the island buildings of midtown Anchorage will fold overnight. It does, however, mean that we may see more creative uses of the existing parking lots littered throughout the city. With minimum parking requirements mandating that a property fit enough parking under a scenario of absolute maximum building occupany, many parking spaces are left untouched throughout the year. Thanks to the repeal, much of this unused space can instead become developable land for housing and offices in prime locations in the city. It was with the urgent crisis of the city's housing shortage in the backdrop, after all, that city leaders were able to pass this dramatic repeal. AK_Urban, a Twitter user who writes about Anchorage and its urban issues, made this excellent image that envisions new housing being built on the parking lot belonging to the Century 16 theater in midtown, under a scenario in which parking requirements are lifted.     

Unfortunately, even with no parking minimums, there will continue to be new developments that will voluntarily include new parking spots. Even Elizabeth Place — a new apartment building that was highly praised for reintroducing housing into the heart of downtown Anchorage, an area of the city that already does not require any parking — contains new parking spaces. The continued need to voluntarily supply parking highlights the deeper systemic problem of automobile dependency, which was compounded through the decades by minimum parking requirements and traffic engineers prioritizing the smooth travel of cars over all other modes of transportation. It was very easy to leave the boundaries of downtown Anchorage half a century ago and create car-centric haphazard development to the point that now the vast majority of its population cannot imagine getting by without a car. It will be slow going and will require decades of work and new development to make these areas outside of downtown into actual, livable places. But the citywide end to minimum parking requirements is certainly a leap  forward in the right direction. 

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. 

Crowne Plaza - Midtown Anchorage

Well it has arrived. Crowne Plaza, formerly the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, opened its first Alaska hotel in Midtown around early fall. Unlike the uninspired flood of Midtown cardboard box hotels that sprouted throughout Midtown in the last ten years, the Crowne Plaza stands out -- and in a good way too. While its competitors use material that make the building look like it's made of cardboard, the Crowne Plaza features a facade of brick on the bottom half, and concrete on the top complete with arch ornamentation on the roof, an uneven facade of uniform windows, and a setback on the bottom after the first floor. The result -- a charming early 20th century style hotel that puts its surroundings, particularly the neighboring hotels nearby, to absolute shame. For those not familiar with the location, the new hotel sits a spitting distance from the also fairly new Marriot and Motel 6 -- both of which continue the ugly hotel style that should be greeted by the city with as much hostility as big box stores. The good news -- the Crowne Plaza sits on the corner of the block thus blocking the ugly hotels from view. Unfortunently the intersection of C Street and Int'l Airport Road and the area around it has a long ways to go, which brings me to another question: why here? Of all the places the Crowne Plaza and its developers could have chosen, why the southern industrial end of Midtown? Why Midtown in general, for that matter? When people think of Midtown, all that can be thought up is old 70s strip malls, parking lots, and a couple of 70s boxy highrises here and there. Southern Midtown, where the Crowne Plaza can be found, is even worse. To the south of the hotel sits self storage warehouses, industrial lots, auto-related businesses, oh and a carpet store. To the north, you have the Vomit Strip -- Applebee's, TGI Fridays, and the centerpiece of all things horrifying, the Golden Corral All-You-Can-Eat pigslop barn. For those not familiar with Golden Corral, it's the one place in which everyone around you weighs over 250 lbs., the food tastes like it came out of a microwave after being shipped in from its hq in North Carolina, and candy corn among other sweets can literally be scooped on to your plate like it was mash potatos -- even the old Royal Fork buffet knew not to go this far. Outside, the parking lot is more than twice the footprint of the building, ultra bright white lights shine down making it look like a car dealership at night, and a electric scroll sign that looks like it came from the 80s greets you and all other passing motorists on C Street. But now I'm going off topic... but I had to get my Golden Corral rant off my chest -- again.

Anyways back on topic, instead of being in its present location, I would have much preferred that the Crowne take the place of the Clairion Suites in Downtown -- another of those unoriginal and ugly slanted roof buildings. Besides fitting it with the more respectable Downtown, the Crowne hotel at that location would be across the street from the Federal Building, diagnal from the Anchorage Museum including the new museum wing, across the street from Nordstrom, and three blocks from the Performing Arts Center, and the Dena'ina convention center. Choices in dining include Humpy's, Bernie's Bungalow, Crush Bistro + Cellar, and Sullivan's Steakhouse among the surrounding blocks not to mention Orso's, the Brewhouse, Sack's, and the Snowgoose within the next couple of blocks after that. As stated earlier, the current dining options nearby the actual location of the Crowne in Midtown are Applebee's, Golden Corral, and TGI Fridays. Oh, forgot Ihop too -- can't forget that. Civically speaking, the Loussac Library is close by, but not close enough considering the walking to be done along the large stretched blocks made up of lonley narrow sidewalks runing next to 45 mph traffic and parking lots. Plus among the civic institutions, the library is really the last thing any visitor really cares to be close to. Among the cultural attractions, ummm... I guess the Alaska Bush Company strip club? It's just down the road in fact, next to the auto repair shop.

In the end, the Crowne Plaza hotel is a welcome addition to the cityscape. Its unique architecture is not only a first among the series of midsized hotels, but also a first in Anchorage architecture in general. Its location however is a testament to the haywire zoning and planning of this city.

what sits directly across from the hotel:










where the hotel should have instead been located:

Centerpoint West - complete

Earlier this year I made a post regarding the construction of Centerpoint West, an eight floor office building in Midtown complimenting the already existing Centerpoint building and JL Tower. Unlike the previous high density buildings going up, I was kinda nervous about how this one would turn out. The reason for this was that in the artist rendering of the office tower, the building looked like it was coming out of a time machine straight from the 1970s or 80s. Well, nearly a year has come and gone, and while construction continues on the garage accompanying it, the building is pretty much done. How did the buildings actual appearence turn out? I can tell you it's imo certainly better looking than the yellowish/jungle green building depicted on the signs advertising office space. Then again as you probably know yourself if you follow these kinds of things, artistic renderings of how a building is going to look usually never match, and sometime are far from looking like the actual product (trust me, I've seen some really bad ones...). With that out of the way, the building still isn't anything special. Unlike its nearby neighbors with arched or wedge shape roofs, curved facades, colorful LED lights, or silhouette drawings, Centerpoint West takes a more strict modernist approach. This, I would like. The problem is while the architects took a different approach with this one, it looks like they did it while going for the lowest price possible. It basically looks cheap... really cheap. It's like the building is trying to replicate the much better looking 188 West Northern Lights tower which is similar in design with the building split with one side being strip windows and the other being all glass. It just doesn't work here. The materials used just look shoddy. And why green again? At least it's not gold (now that would've been realllly 80's), but the ASRC building is just nearby. I think light blue, or just clear like in the new convention center would've worked better with the gray. Other than that, the building has shaped up to be what was expected. I'm glad they went for a parking garage. That whole area, formally a trailer park, would've become a parking nightmare with all the new office towers and employees going in and out with less and less space to park. Centerpoint West is building #6 to go up in the area (known by few as "Plaza 36") since 2000 and more building(s) are expected to go up.

Centerpoint West rises

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.

JL Tower's LED display finally gets its due

I was kinda surprised as I picked up the Sunday edition of the ADN this morning to see that the LED lighting of the new JL Tower made the front page. Ermm... the penthouse of the new building has been lit with blue, green, and even red (for a short time) since the dark nights of December '07. So why report on the towers colorful floodlights now? Well apparently the lighting show has finally been tuned after tweaking around with the display since late last year. Okay, well that's cool. What I find really appealing about the buildings nighttime appearance however, is the white floodlights from the ground that brighten the entire building facade. Despite making the building look as if it's clamoring for even more attention, I really liked the idea of bathing the whole facade in light (just as long as it's on only for the early evening and not the entire night). Anyways so todays article goes on to interview the developers at JL Properties as they talk about how they have used recycled materials as tabletop counters, exercise rooms for employees, a Kaladi Bros. cafe, blah blah blah. I guess what I found really amusing was the urban analysis that a consultant who was interviewed for the article used when describing the future prosperity of the area where the JL Tower sits:

"The building is a harbinger of what's to come... The area is attractive to builders because of its expanses of undeveloped land, especially compared to crowded downtown".

Expanses of land? More than half of the available land in that area is gone! Unlike downtown, which has public parking garages readily available to the benefit of developers, the developers behind 'Plaza 36' squandered the former trailer park neighborhood with acres of surface parking lots for their buildings. Each of the parking lots for the JL Tower, ASRC, and Centerpoint Plaza have a larger footprint than the building itself. From the appearance of it, it seems only the new Alutiiq Plaza and the AlaskaUSA Financial Center have more building and less parking (I could be wrong though). Anyways the consultant goes on to say:

"From a public transportation point of view, it makes sense to concentrate offices in one area because it's easier for workers to take the bus".

If we're going to talk about it from a public transport point of view, I think it would have been preferable that the buildings in the Plaza 36 area give up some of their ego and join the heart of Midtown rather than be on the edge of Midtown in a sea of asphalt. In other words, do what the developers behind 188 West Northern Lights did and build a tower that truly cares about the future of Anchorage. Unlike the JL Tower, 188 WNL is situated between Northern Lights Boulevard and Benson in front of C Street -- perhaps the most visible location in the city today. The building offers space for ground floor retail while the parking garage is snugged quietly into the building. A first for Anchorage that deserves positive recognition. Instead of the People Mover bus making a detour to serve the new Plaza 36 office park on the edge of Midtown, workers in the JL Tower could have walked to existing bus stops already in place in the heart of Midtown, had the JL Tower been located there instead of the edge. With that, here's a map that shows the remaining land available for the developers at JL Properties when including surface parking:

click to enlarge