Anchorage Daily News

Residents of the Grandview Gardens neighborhood had taken all they were going to take from the stair people.

And so, after years of complaints, the so-called "Stairway to Nowhere" is gone. By the time a backhoe got through with it, there was nothing left but a patch of earth, like a fresh grave, sprinkled with the golden leaves of autumn.

"We're so happy," said neighbor James Gray. "I tell you, I'm drinking champagne tonight."

This infamous stairway has been a mischief magnet for years. The steps, covered by an awning-like green metal roof, rose up the bluff off East 15th Avenue between Nichols and Norene streets at such a steep pitch, you couldn't see what was going on up there. And there was a lot going on.

Homeless guys getting hammered. Drug deals going down. Kids yelling. Bottles breaking. Police showing up and chasing hooligans around.

If you sent an officer to the bottom of the stairs, the troublemakers would scramble to the top, said Anchorage police spokesman Lt. Dave Parker. If you sent an officer to the top, they'd bolt to the bottom and scatter.

The intentions were good. The concrete stairs were built in 1967 to improve pedestrian access in the neighborhood. The roof was added in 1971, and replaced four or five years ago.

Gray, who grew up just a few blocks away, remembers those stairs from back when he was a boy 30-some years ago, when neighborhood kids went there to make out and sneak smokes. He got to know the stairway's dark side when he bought the lot right next to it, built a duplex with a six-foot wooden fence and moved in about a year ago.

"When I put my fence up it made it way worse," he said. "I enclosed it for them."

The things he's heard from his bedroom window. Kids hollering at the top of their lungs. Drunks fighting. Glass shattering.

Now and then, he'd get up, get dressed, and go out to confront them: "Hey, I gotta work in the morning."

Like they cared.

"After the gang-bangers showed up, we realized we had a bigger problem."

PARTY IN THE BACKYARD

The hideout wasn't really a stairway to nowhere. For a certain contingent, it was a stairway to the liquor store across Bragaw.

Teri Albrecht, project spokeswoman for the city, saw it for herself on Monday. As deconstruction got under way, a guy came by on a bicycle, disappeared for a spell, then returned with a case of beer that fit perfectly in his oversized bicycle basket.

"He stops right here. He looks at the guy operating the backhoe and he looks at me, and he goes, 'Hey, you guys want a beer?' And it's like 9 in the morning or something."

Todd Tackes, who lives next to Gray, has had his own troubles with the stair people. Before Gray bought the property, folks would hang out in that vacant lot. Once he built his duplex, they moved the party to Tackes' yard.

"Every night they would come, and I'd have anywhere from five to eight homeless people partying at my picnic table," he said. "I left them alone for a few nights, and then I got tired of it. I moved the picnic table all the way up against the house. They still were coming. I eventually had to sell the picnic table."

TRASH VIGILANTESElida Horn, who thinks of her neighbors almost as extended family, loves this neighborhood so much she started cleaning the stairs herself. She's not the only one. There are several trash vigilantes. It's that kind of neighborhood.

Gray, too, has swept or picked up garbage, broken glass, hypodermic needles, condoms. He's dragged his garden hose over and hosed off vomit and stuff left behind from people who mistook the stairs for a toilet.

Getting his fence graffitied was the pits. And then there were the Molotov cocktails.

"One Sunday night, about 10:30, I hear this crash and explosion, and there was a fireball outside my bedroom window. It lit up my bedroom like broad daylight. I thought my house was on fire."

Given his day job -- as a fire and arson investigator for the city -- he did not take this lightly.

"The next day I was looking for another place to live."

But he held on.

STAIRS HAVE TO GO

Although people had been complaining about those stairs for years, little happened until Anchorage Assemblywoman Elvi Gray-Jackson took up the fight. Petitions were signed. Calls were placed. Meetings were held. Noise was made.

"A lot of the neighbors came and they were beside themselves," said Gray-Jackson, who listened to horror story after horror story. "I couldn't have put up with it as long as they did."

The executive board of the Airport Heights Community Council, which includes Grandview Gardens, made the request official. Finally, the stairs' fate was sealed.

Taking off the roof would have blown the cover, but also would have created a safety hazard in winter. So the whole thing had to go, at a cost of $25,000 to $30,000, according to city spokeswoman Sarah Erkmann. That includes landscaping and extending a guardrail along the bottom. The adjacent dirt trail up the bluff will stay.

"People passing through is no problem," Gray said. "We just don't want them hanging out there."

The roof came off Monday morning, and the backhoe took the last few bites out of the concrete steps that afternoon. By evening, Gray and another neighbor were ecstatic as they admired the empty spot where the stairs used to be.

Then some kids showed up.

"Hey, where'd our stairs go?"

"I don't know," Gray said.

Once he was back in his yard, a bottle came flying over his fence and crashed in his driveway.

He took it in stride.

"It's just, you know, sort of like a parting shot, I guess."

Find Debra McKinney online at adn.com/contact/dmckinney or call 257-4465.

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