Anchorage Daily News

For years the most memorable feature of the old two-story building at 26th and Spenard was a pot leaf painted on an outside wall, welcoming northbound traffic.

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On the inside -- low-rent apartments, a series of pizza joints frequented by the dreadlock crowd and the headquarters of a marijuana legalization campaign.

As Spenard muscled into the new century, the final pizza parlor shuttered and the building sagged into disrepair. In 2006, investors Lottie Michael and Lamar Cotten bought it out of foreclosure and spent close to a year rehabilitating it. Now signs for a chic bakery and a hip boutique beckon from the awning.

"I've always liked the building because I've always liked Spenard," Michael said. "Every city has a neighborhood like that. It's walking distance to downtown, it's walking distance to Midtown, it's the center of the universe."

The old Spenard of tawdry legend isn't totally dead. The rusting car lots, dumpster-lined streets and mossy log cabins haven't gone away. On Friday nights, a stripper will still take your money in the dim light at PJs. But in the commercial heart of the neighborhood, anchored by hang-out hubs for the city's fleece-clad uber-actives -- REI, Bear Tooth, Title Wave Books, The Alaska Club and Kaladi Bros. -- a new attitude has reached critical mass.

Building face-lifts have become as commonplace in the neighborhood as trailers and potholes used to be. Like Michael, small investors take the success of the anchors as a promising sign. Girdwood retailer World Cup Sports renovated a 60-year-old laundromat into a cozy ski shop that opened in the fall. Middle Way Cafe recently moved into a big new space. There's fancy French wine at the new Brown Jug liquor store. Even La Mex has a paint job.

"I wouldn't say it's gentrification," said Cathy Alcorn, who sells vintage clothes at Metro Retro across from the Bear Tooth. "It's artistification."

Between Benson Boulevard and Fireweed Lane, parking lots empty and fill with the tides of the movie schedule at the Bear Tooth. There are vintage suits and edgy haircuts, handmade jewelry and low-rider bikes, cream puffs and wheat-grass shots. Walk half a block in any direction, you run into a store selling gear: snow boards, ski wax, specialty bike tires. And this spring, the neighborhood will welcome that classic sign of urban renewal: a bagel shop.

"It's starting to be a little trendy," said Mike Gordon, who's owned the landmark bar Chilkoot Charlie's since 1970. "I certainly prefer it to the hookers walking around."

SLEAZE TO STYLE

In the '70s, Spenard ran on sleaze -- on cocaine and motels, massage parlors and stratospheric bar tabs. In the '80s, when the pipeline boom went bust, decay settled among the pawn shops and the liquor stores even as civic-driven "beautification" got slapped on south Spenard Road itself.

It wasn't until the '90s that the neighborhood started shaking off its seedy image. Today Spenard has a certain cachet among the young, the artistic and the active.

"This is Spenard, this is not Anchorage," said Rene Requa, who owns World Cup Sports. "We want our customers to know we're in Spenard. ... It's cool. It's hip. It's diverse."

So what pushed Spenard into the light? What took it from rowdy to hip? There were lots of plans over the years to upgrade, but most of them didn't go very far, said Tom Nelson, city planning director.

Still, change happened anyhow.

"It evolved. It wasn't any deliberate plan that did it," Nelson said. "It's the synergy of certain types of uses that complement one another."

REI draws retail customers. Bear Tooth, a made-over $1 theater, is an entertainment destination. Those businesses brought others into what was already a busy transportation corridor, he said. The city wants to support the changes in the neighborhood by taming traffic and making room for pedestrians on widened sidewalks. -- upgrades that are controversial among older business owners but will make the area more attractive to new investment, Nelson said.

Compare Spenard today to Mountain View -- a neighborhood with similar problems that's been targeted by government and nonprofits determined to turn it into an "arts and culture" center. Small business owners in Spenard say change has to come from residents and businesses, not from outside organizations, no matter how well-meaning.

"They are pouring a lot of money into Mountain View to be this artistic neighborhood but it's happening naturally here," said Alcorn at Metro Retro.

Michael said Spenard proves that urban renewal requires an investment from the private sector.

"We don't need the city to fix everything," she said. "This is our hometown. It's not the city's responsibility to upgrade private property."

ROOTS

In a way, Spenard's going back to its roots. The northern commercial area was once called "the miracle mile," -- Main Street for a suburb that had its own dot on most maps, though it was never actually a separate town, explained Larry Hibpshman, a neighborhood historian. In the '50s, after World War II, people who couldn't afford downtown came to Spenard looking to start businesses and families in the haphazard wooded neighborhoods without water or sewer.

Spenard's winding roads and rabbity building patterns gave the neighborhood a different atmosphere from the neat grid of downtown Anchorage. It had its own outsider culture and a tradition of tolerance, Hibpshman said. Today's modern street, with its mix of small local businesses and immigrant-owned restaurants, has the optimistic feel of those early days.

"It has its ups and its downs but what you have are people who are struggling to make their way," he said.

Increasing prices and scarcity of land have pushed condo developments into Spenard's trailer parks. Young professionals looking for affordable houses with history and Coastal Trail proximity are fixing up homes in the eccentric neighborhoods that follow the railroad tracks from Tudor to Northern Lights, said Peggy French, a real estate agent familiar with the area.

"They don't want fancy, they don't want white-bread, they want just a little bit of charm in an old funky way," she said.

"It's a young neighborhood," said Marty Weiser, of Marty's New York Bagel Deli on Dimond Boulevard, which is opening a Spenard store this spring between Title Wave Books and Kaladi Bros. "The young 30somethings are the ones spending money. They are the ones that are making retail vibrant."

RENAISSANCE

Everyone has a favorite comparison for Spenard's reborn character: Seattle 20 years ago. Greenwich Village. Georgetown. Portland's bohemian artery, Hawthorne Boulevard. It's clearly a contrast to the usual model of Anchorage development with boxy chain stores built for car traffic. The scale of the neighborhood is small and sidewalks connect everything, so at least in theory, you don't need a car.

Michael's improved building, swathed in tasteful colors and corrugated metal, attracted Lena Kilic and Annie Ciszak, owners of Bella Boutique, a shop selling DIY treasures: handmade coin purses shaped like frilly underwear, arm cuffs fashioned from socks, kitchy aprons, artisan-made necklaces, raw-silk glow-in-the-dark skeleton ties.

When they decided to move out of downtown, the partners looked at office space all over Anchorage, but 2601 Spenard kept calling them back. It felt like something was happening there.

"Spenard is going through this awesome little renaissance," Ciszak said.

Next door, Sugarspoon, a sleek dessert restaurant, opened in mid-January serving meringue towers and creme brulees under the glow of Chilkoot Charlie's parking-lot windmill. Across the street, Bill Perkins bought another run-down building, part of a 50-year-old strip mall next to Bosco's, patched it up and opened Manhattan Pizza, the little business he's wanted to start for years.

His pies have New York style crust, topped with cheese and sauce ingredients shipped in from back east. So far he mostly does delivery and slices for the late-night crowd -- he's open to 3 a.m.-- but by summer he's looking at capturing the lunch crowd. Confidence in Spenard is contagious, he said.

"People look at the way the Bear Tooth has done," he said. "Since they can do well, people just believe in this section."

Find Julia O'Malley online at adn.com/contact/jomalley or call 257-4591.

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