:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/adn/DZMVF4CR7NCULFNJFS52RMLJ44.jpg)
In advance of the April 6 Anchorage municipal election, the Anchorage Daily News asked candidates running for Anchorage mayor a series of issue questions. These include questions suggested by readers. Read all the mayor and school board candidates’ responses here.
Q: Downtown Anchorage has been hit especially hard by impacts from the pandemic, with tourism, gatherings and events greatly reduced and many businesses and organizations struggling as a result. Another difficult summer with greatly reduced tourism appears likely. What’s your vision for downtown, and what specifically are your short-term and long-term plans for repairing damage from the past year?
Blocking roads downtown for outdoor dining was very nice. I would encourage more businesses to participate so residents have a reason to go downtown.
Downtown is losing major retailers which serve as anchors for our small businesses. Vagrancy and crime are causing shoppers to avoid downtown. Our first goal will be to restore downtown to a safe and vibrant location. For our long-term goals, we will work to attract new businesses to downtown. While simultaneously focusing on efforts and activities to encourage locals to shop and enjoy all that downtown offers.
For the upcoming summer, I think much of downtown should become a walking mall. Streets should be closed strategically for maximum access, and provide vendor space to the businesses outside, and dining spaces as well, allowing COVID-safe shopping and dining, and events and entertainment. The city should allow tents and protection and mobile outdoor facilities as needed. Every effort should be made to market Anchorage as a hub for Alaska as a safe vacation destination. Public-private partnerships for downtown revitalization are equally important and incentivizing new and remodeled building for higher-density residences will bring people, activities and events
Downtown should be the premier location in Alaska for live entertainment, convenient shopping and award-winning art. My administration will seek to transform 4th Avenue and E Street into pedestrian promenades, working with the nearby businesses, as these have been successful in other cities in increasing commerce and safety. We can also showcase existing trails, murals and shops with a better wayfinding system — one that incorporates Indigenous places and language — and work to improve the brand of both downtown and Anchorage for visitors. In addition, making downtown feel safe and vital means having “eyes on the street” and folks actually living downtown. Regulatory changes, incentives and leveraging the municipality’s own property holdings can make affordable downtown housing a reality.
The decline of downtown started well before the pandemic. The damage from the past year is just a continuation of the cumulative damage from several years of a lack of focus on business development. Our approach to downtown redevelopment must be twofold: first, we must take advantage of any development opportunity in the downtown area whether it is residential or commercial and regardless of its size; second, we need to make an effort to attract a large-scale project that will combine residential and commercial and thus create economic gravity which will attract other investments. Downtown is a “canary in a coal mine” for Anchorage’s economic health.
A vibrant, clean and safe downtown is critical to Anchorage’s success. Investments and partnerships that ensure downtown continues to thrive, and that make downtown more walkable and active will serve all of us well. Anchorage will need to assure that the local conditions needed for a robust return of tourism and a thriving restaurant and cultural scene are met. That will include everything from encouraging new construction, to using the mayor’s position to encourage residents to patronize recovering businesses, to working with the Anchorage Downtown Partnership and other organizations to engage in strong placemaking, space activation and other revitalization efforts. It can also include street configuration changes to support more open-air dining and pedestrian promenades.
It’s a long road to bring back tourism without sacrificing the lives of those who reside here in Anchorage. We wouldn’t have as much business if we closed inbound traffic, but all business would still be open. I intend to bring speaking engagements for experts in their field or culture to speak in downtown Anchorage, and all the way to hosting large events once we are past quarantine.
My vision is for a safe, clean, colorful and cultural downtown. Over the last few years, I have begun deploying strategies to allow Anchorage visitors to stay longer and explore further. I am responsible for the emergence of art on downtown trash cans, which is now a collaborative project between the municipality, the Downtown Partnership and the Anchorage School District. This summer, I would continue creative street activation, continued public art installations and expanded Alaska Native placemaking. I believe that we can begin roaring back by the winter of 2021 and into the summer of 2022.
The reality is that downtown needs to be dealt with in the same way we deal with all of our businesses in the city. First we need to get open. We need to invite tourists back. Short-term, the solution will be absorbed in the help we provide to the whole community. Long-term, we need to think bigger when it comes to downtown. We need to get the port restored and revitalized, we need to build and develop a waterfront area so that we have a strong reason for tourists and locals to spend time down town.
Read more questions:
Why are you running for mayor?
What’s the biggest challenge facing city government and how would you address it?
Describe how your administration would approach the coronavirus pandemic
Would you make changes to the Anchorage Police Department and policing policies? Why?
Is the Anchorage Police Department adequately staffed?
Describe, with specifics, how you would expand and diversify Anchorage’s economy.
What’s your vision for Anchorage’s economy in the future?
Is taxation in Anchorage too high/about right/too low?
Do you have ideas for alternative sources of city revenue? Explain.
Are there city programs or services you would cut? Explain.
Are there city programs or services you would expand? Explain.
What’s your view of current Anchorage land-use plans? Would you push for changes?
Name a program dealing with homelessness in Anchorage that you believe is working
Are there specific transportation projects you would initiate in the municipality if elected?