Anchorage Daily News

Jimmy Wong, an 84-year-old businessman, is the key to carrying out a major piece of the city's recently adopted downtown development plan.

Wong owns two buildings on Fourth Avenue at D Street, a bright yellow office building long known as the Sunshine Plaza and, next to it, a building formerly called the Post Office Mall.

The Anchorage Assembly approved a plan to guide downtown's future on Dec. 11. Wong's block is identified as a hot site because of its potential to add liveliness to downtown and draw further development.

The city suggests a public market on the site, one that serves mostly local residents with food, shopping and places to sit and eat. An illustration in the downtown plan shows a covered year-round market.

Other city recommendations are to build a new transit center on the Third Avenue side of Wong's property to serve People Mover and inter-city bus lines, and to create an arts and cultural center in Wong's buildings, which would feature the work of local artists, including Native artists. It would draw tourists as well as local residents.

Wong, a developer in Hawaii and Alaska, says his ideas dovetail nicely with the city's. He is already starting his personal revitalization plan for the whole block -- including a new name for the buildings and a new look. The buildings and plaza are now the 4th Avenue Market Place.

He recently bought the Alaska Experience Theatre's domed theater and tourist earthquake show, to be moved into the 4th Avenue Market Place.

Here's some of what Wong has to say, edited for clarity and length.

Q. I get the idea from the downtown plan that the city contemplates tearing down (the old Post Office Mall). Is that what you think?

A. They wanted to tear it down, but I told them that building is 90,000 square feet. They didn't realize how huge it was. They were saying why don't you tear it down and build a new one? I said, I can't build any more than 90,000 square feet. Why should I demolish it? I can just renovate it. And that's what I'm doing.

Q. So you'll make it a lot a lighter and brighter?

A. That's right.

The theater is going to seat about 100 people. We have to tear down the roof and raise the roof. During the summer, we'll open for the tourists.

During the winter months, eventually, we can show three-dimension movies for the students, you know like the "Seven Wonders of the World." I'm trying to do it like an educational thing.

... If you went into the Post Office Mall, you'd see Two Spirits (a gallery that shows work by Alaska artists). We're trying to expand that philosophy. We're trying to get more Natives to show their arts and crafts and to sell directly to the tourist industry.

(Wong shows a drawing of how the Post Office Mall could look -- blue with yellow trim, with killer whale sculptures plunging off the roof. He says the city didn't like the whales.)

They think it is overpowering. So we're having an artist to tone it down a little.

All of these statues in this area, everything is going to kind of relate to the ocean -- either otter or the whale or the porpoise. I'm trying to do this, to kind of be reminiscent as to what Pike Place Market in Seattle was to begin with.

I'm doing this in stages. To me the anchor is going to be the theater. That will draw the people down into this area.

Up until I bought this building and did all the changes here, nobody would go past E Street. They thought this was Skid Row already. For all the last five years, I've just been struggling ... to clear up the scene.

Across the street now they have two more bars there, but they're kind of a little bit subtle. So it's much better.

Q. In the downtown plan, this block is really a center of activity.

A. I guess the mayor and convention center began to realize, if they have the conventions to come here, what are they going to do during the winter? They can be at a convention, but what are the wives going to do if they don't have something like this?

Q. Do you anticipate having the kind of public marketplace that's in this plan, with food and groceries?

A. The library's there for another two to three years. Eventually that's going to be the marketplace. That will be the ideal spot. It's on the Third Avenue side. You can put the fish market there and have the people from Palmer come there and during the summer sell their wares. In the winter, you have to import the stuff there. But at least there'll be an alternative there.

Q. What is the price tag for all this?

A. The whole thing? It's going to be about $2 million to $2.5 million dollars that we're going to spend.

Q. On the exterior and interior?

A. The exterior, interior and Alaska Experience Theatre and all that. I got more bullish about it when I found out the Alaska Experience was up for sale. I bought the whole franchise. I hired the whole staff.

Q. How are you feeling about downtown in general, how it's developing?

A. Other merchants could not do what I'm doing because they don't have the building or the structure. If you look at downtown, all the buildings were built a long time ago and they were all small buildings.

When I first bought this thing here, I've always thought about having a tourist attraction like in Hawaii. If you've been to Waikiki, there's what they call an international marketplace.

The community really needs something like this. You have the 5th Avenue Mall; that's fine. But it's like going to Los Angeles or something. It's the same thing. A mall is a mall.

To me, I really feel like if you do something that fundamentally relates to the culture, that's what the tourist wants to see.

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