Anchorage police closed an alleyway behind the Egan Center on Saturday night and sent a bomb squad to investigate a "suspicious package" that turned out to be an abandoned lunchbox.
Police "were alerted to a small cooler that was dropped off in the alleyway" behind the Egan Center at 8:25 p.m. and called the department's bomb squad to the area to "render the cooler safe," the Anchorage Police Department said in a statement Saturday night.
A few hours earlier, a bomb explosion in New York City had wounded 29 people.
Conservative author Ann Coulter was speaking at the Egan Center at the time.
The explosives experts determined that the cooler was actually a lunchbox, APD spokeswoman Renee Oistad said Sunday.
It contained items "one would normally associate with a lunchbox," Oistad wrote. "There was no threat to public safety."