I watched a silly movie recently about cute angels that have magical fedoras. They wear these fedoras around New York City, and so long as they're wearing that old-school hat, each door they walk through becomes a portal into another building, another side of town, in some cases another dimension. I couldn't get that movie out of my head as I was walked with Anchorage artist Christopher Constant across Fairview, that neighborhood of many doors, many disparate areas, much history and perhaps, maybe a sparkling future.
Fairview borders lots of well-known areas in Anchorage: Downtown, South Addition, Rogers Park and Mountain View. The hunk of a neighborhood whose boundaries, on the map of Anchorage, resemble a blocky, Lego warrior.
I suppose it's fitting, given all that Fairview has fought for and against: trying to form a livable, safe and vibrant neighborhood in a long-neglected area handicapped by poor city planning and good intentions of Alaska's social service agencies gone awry.
Constant, an artist and community activist, is one of the most recent in a long line of strong activists with access to doors that most of us do not. Those of us, at least, who don't live in Fairview, don't know nearly every square inch of the neighborhood. Don't have neighbors whose doors always seem open to them.
Constant doesn't wear a fedora, but he does have energy. And a mission.
And what a diversity of homes those doors led through. Through alleyways and yards, we walked through doors that led into homes of all sorts: big ones and tiny ones, tidy ones and dingy ones. Homes that have seen better days and brand spanking-new homes. On our walk through the neighborhood we went through the home of a lobbyist and the home of an artist. We walked through a log cabin -- one of the oldest in Anchorage, belonging to 86-year-old Mike Madill, the oldest living Marine veteran of World War II in Anchorage.
Madill is a former tap dancer and radio performer. Morgan Freeman studied with him for years. He performed with Patti Page and Lena Horne, and has the pictures on his wall to prove it.
We walked through a post-modern apartment building, its outside dressed in aluminum armor. Inside were soaring ceilings and a dyed cement floor. Above, on the rooftop, grew a garden. That duplex belongs to S.J. Klein and Karen Larson and it's got to be one of the nicest buildings in the part of Fairview—not the part touching South Addition--not always known for its nice buildings. They spent a full winter in an unheated trailer while the property was built. Another apartment building, a block or so down, seems to have taken its clues from the Klein and Larson residence. Although not quite as avant-garde, it too is dressed in aluminum, and it too looks loved.
"That's the way it works," Constant said. "One building begins to imitate others." To make his point, he pointed to the way roofs pitched similarly in recently built and remodeled houses. "Cute," he said, over and over. Or sometimes even, "super cute." Cuteness, in this case, was often in the eye of the beholder. Many of the houses were old and built at a time, apparently, when the residents of Anchorage were very, very short. But some of them are, truly cute, and one thing is without question: more and more houses are being remodeled in Fairview. More and more yards are being tended. More professionals are moving in.
Fairview still has a way to go, said long-time real estate agent Lisa Herrington, but it's "definitely improving." And why not? It's so close to downtown. It has a school, a grocery store. It has, one would think, all the makings for a nice neighborhood, even an upscale one.
We walked across trash-strewn streets and into well maintained parks. We crossed the lush, green grass of these well-maintained parks into others that were strewn with empty liquor bottles. Constant is a constant talker and walker. An artist and community activist who found his calling -- his greatest canvas in the neighborhood that could, always thought it could, and still could.
Maybe.
At least that's what a handful of highly involved activists, including Constant, hope.
A highway and history runs through it
A long line of folks have invested deeply, personally into Fairview. They've put their hearts and souls into the neighborhood. Fairview's history includes some big fights, the first of which, in the late 1950s, was actually getting the neighborhood into Anchorage. The few residents of Fairview thought it would do better on its own. But Anchorage wanted it -- not so much because anybody thought it would amount to much -- but in part so the city could pave an access from the Glenn Highway to the New Seward Highway.
Residents fought. The state prevailed through legislative mandate that forced Fairview into Anchorage.
Fairview is huge, and diverse, but the area most associated with it is from 15th to 6th Avenues. And it was indeed this area that most suffered because of that road, or roads. Four lanes of Ingra Street running south, four lanes of Gambell Street running north, both of which had previously been quiet, residential streets. The couplet left two blocks of land in the center, about a mile long. "A no man's land," said Darrell Hess, a longtime community activist and now the Municipality of Anchorage Homeless Leadership Team coordinator.
The two roads effectively severed the heart of the neighborhood, the aorta of which was Carrs-Gottstein grocery store. There once was even a nice little café on 13th Avenue and Hyder. Now the closest place to get a sit-down cup of coffee in Fairview, according to Constant, is Lucky Wishbone. The idea at the time, Hess said, was that Fairview was a worthless neighborhood that would never amount to anything. Now it's a "poster child to why we have environmental justice," he said.
More bad decisions from the city: zoning. Fairview is one of the only neighborhoods in Anchorage that mixes high density housing with light and heavy industry. Businesses and apartment complexes moved en mass during the 1970s and early 1980s oil boom, and moved out as quickly during the crash, leaving skeletons behind -- an urban war zone perfect to house the soldiers of the time, the crack soldiers.
"I moved to the neighborhood on New Year's Eve, about 25 years ago," said Hess. "On that night, four people were killed not five buildings down from me. Bullets hit my front door twice," he said.
Allen Kemplen, a longtime Fairview community activist, said that those dark days, long ago, were provided at least a cause to fight around. They brought the neighborhood together and the people living there began to fight back. They set up a Fairview neighborhood watch program. Lobbied for more police. They fought when Brother Francis shelter wanted to erect a "sleep off" center on the edge of the neighborhood.
Fairview won that battle. (The sleep off center ended up next to the Anchorage Jail, which is still technically in the neighborhood, but farther away than the Brother Francis). When the Alcoholics Anonymous Club had to be moved because of the 15th Avenue expansion, the community fought to keep AA from moving back in. They won that one, too.
They fought and won for streets intended to stop through traffic. For landscaping and (some) trash stations and benches near the bus stops.
On our walk-around, Constant pointed out a bus stop without such luxuries, and said that nearly every day, someone sits down and passes out, right onto someone's lawn. A few nights later, I was driving by and did, indeed, see someone passed out on a lawn.
Ruined canvas?
Recently, the Fairview community coalesced in opposition to Karluk Manor, a new housing program for alcoholics being built by the nonprofit group, RuralCap, at the old Red Roof Inn on the corner of the 5th Avenue and Karluk Street. With 46 efficiency apartments, the program -- one that does not require alcoholics to stop drinking in order to get housing -- will be the largest in the state.
The community was incensed. Residents argued that Fairview already had its share of homelessness services, including Bean's Café and the Brother Francis shelter. The sleep-off center and the jail. The Downtown Soup Kitchen, and other social service agencies.
Indeed, Constant said, if you watch long enough, you'll see the homeless leave the sleep-off center in the morning and head up to Brother Francis or Beans for lunch. Follow them as they head to the Oaken Keg liquor and beer store at Carrs. Watch them as they head to the park next to the new shelter. Sometimes the course deviates and they head into the heart of Fairview, into the community's "safe zone."
With those extra 46 rooms on the horizon, Constant and others believe things will only get worse for Fairview, just as things seemed to be getting better.
Neither Constant nor Kemplen believe the Karluk Manor will send Fairview back to the dark days, those crack-infested days. But neither believe that the house will do the neighborhood any favors.
"Couples and seniors are moving back to Fairview, to the urban centers. Fairview is positioned very well to prosper. For some reason, our political leaders don't see that," Kemplen said.
Hess, who stayed neutral on the Karluk Manor debate, said reams of reports produced about such housing programs across the country offered little data to conclude Fairview would again be blighted, or even negatively impacted, by its construction. "There are a lot of people who think they know what's going to happen, but they don't know," he said.
As for Constant and others, they're still fighting. He still has reason to believe that the project can be stopped. And if not, he'll continue to work for the neighborhood.
"It's the biggest, the greatest canvas I've ever painted on," he said. "This is art. This place is a beautiful piece of art."
Contact Amanda Coyne at amanda(at)alaskadispatch.com