Alaska News

Our view: New digs in Mountain View

Cruise through Mountain View in East Anchorage, and you'll note signs that the once derelict neighborhood still needs improvement, despite ambitious redevelopment plans. Street and landscaping improvements long promised are only partly done. The Glenn Square Mall, built with encouragement of the city, looks handsome but many stores are vacant and its parking lots have just a scattering of cars much of the time. The plan to turn Mountain View into an artsy district It's moving in fits and starts, and not yet realized.

But one aspect of the neighborhood is already blossoming: From one end of Mountain View to the other, blocks are sprinkled with sturdy, pretty new houses with porches and garages.

That's the work of Cook Inlet Housing Authority, which has charged through the neighborhood over recent years buying up deteriorated, trashed-out four-plexes and shacks-- a drug house in one case -- and tearing them down. They're replacing the blighted buildings with new and refurbished houses, duplexes and apartments.

They've bought and turned around 111 blighted properties, making a huge, visible difference to the character of Mountain View.

At an open house this month for five new houses on Tarwater Avenue, where a snow dump used to be, Cook Inlet Housing CEO Carol Gore said the authority has rebuilt or will redevelop about 9 percent of the housing stock in Mountain View.

But it's spread around, so it enhances the neighborhood instead of becoming a subdivision on its own.

The Tarwater Avenue houses, which will be painted in bright colors, feature varied styles, such as shingles, curved windows, and porches with pillars.

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At 3612 Tarwater, a high ceiling unites the living, dining and kitchen area into one attractive, airy room.

The asking prices for these houses are $220,000 to $249,000, but they will be sold to people who earn 80 percent of the median income in Anchorage, or less -- $59,600 for a family of four.

Cook Inlet apartments go to residents earning even less. And Habitat for Humanity, which has been building simpler, basic houses in Mountain View for a long time, puts home ownership within reach of the poorest working families.

Retiree Don Crandall, who bought a Cook Inlet Housing Authority house, says new and refurbished housing is making Mountain View more stable.

He says the other people he knows in new Mountain View houses include couples with young children, couples with no kids and families with older children. "It's a diverse crowd ethnically."

Other housing agencies and non-profits can build houses. But Cook Inlet Housing is the only agency that's set up for the expensive process of demolishing old, worn-out housing to build new.

Cook Inlet is making one more big push through Mountain View to get rid of the most blighted property left.

"We now own some of the ugliest properties ever," said Gore. Cook Inlet is in the middle of buying five lots on Bliss Street, where there's a boarded-up, barracks style building that looks like a motel, next to a structure that consists of a caved-in basement.

An old Tesoro station and car wash on Mountain View Drive looks OK, but the site is contaminated. It will be cleaned up and turned into a mixed use building with commercial space and apartments.

What Mountain View needs next, says Gore, is more private investment -- an insurance company, a hairdresser, a dentist's office, for example. Credit Union One's decision to build a branch on Mountain View Drive is a big boost.

Many agencies and non-profits are working at making Mountain View more attractive, vital and safer, with varying degrees of success.

Cook Inlet Housing, quietly going about the business of providing affordable housing, gets an A-plus for already making dramatic improvements to the neighborhood.

BOTTOM LINE: Cook Inlet Housing is doing a great job building better houses in one of Anchorage's struggling neighborhoods.

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