To improve safety, Karluk Street must go

On a Tuesday afternoon in mid‐October, concerned and engaged members of the East 3rd Avenue community gathered in the mayor’s conference room of City Hall to see the newly re‐imagined Third Avenue Channelization project. After the first concept presented in March garnered widespread push-back and criticism from the community, as highlighted in a previous column, the city headed back to the drawing board, this time bringing back with them a much more palatable option for the community to consider: no “channelization” at all.

Gone was the extremely expensive and unwanted driving lane reduction in favor of adding a sidewalk to the south side of Third Avenue from Post Road to Ingra Street as well as street light upgrades, resulting in an estimated reduction in cost from $3.8 million to “just under $1 million,” we were told. While this was a great step in the right direction, a better and cheaper solution emerged in the conversation.

During the discussion, Downtown Assembly member Christopher Constant pleaded his case for the support of the elimination and vacation of Karluk Street from Third Avenue to Fourth Avenue in its entirety, fencing it off and splitting the property down the center, turning it over to the adjoining property owners. "If our plan is to save lives as this project intends, we must eliminate the purpose, the need, any desire at all to cross to the south side of Third Avenue across from the shelter. We must give the people no reason to cross the road in the first place ... it’s the only way,” Constant stated. This was not the first time we had heard him mention this possibility, but the first time we had given it serious thought.

Karluk Street has become Anchorage’s miniature Skid Row. It is a hotbed of illegal activity and a nuisance to the community that surrounds it, a place providing little to no value to the neighborhood it is intended to serve. It is regularly the site for late-night block parties resulting in drunkenness and drug use. Illegal camps, bicycle chop shops, drug dealing, public urination and defecation, Karluk Street is where the action is. The street has become such a public nuisance that the Anchorage Police Department’s Community Action Policing team, Mobile Intervention Team and members of the Parks and Rec Department now do a sweep of Karluk Street twice a week on Wednesday and Friday — forcing individuals off the street, removing structures and picking up all the trash that has accumulated since their last sweep. Within two hours of their departure, the people have returned, reversing all their hard work. And for what, to return days later and do it all over again? Here on East Third Avenue, we call it “APD maid service.” This twice-weekly exercise typically consists of a team of four to 10 municipal employees, depending on the day. It’s a costly expenditure to taxpayers.

When asked about the elimination of Karluk Street, the executive directors of both Bean’s Café and Brother Francis Shelter supported the idea in concept, recognizing value to both the safety of the people they serve and the neighbors who are affected by Karluk’s chaos. One concern was ensuring access for emergency response vehicles to easily serve the campus; however, Latouche Street, just one block over, easily provides this necessary access with a minuscule addition to response times to the campus. It is also our understanding emergency response vehicles are already utilizing Latouche Street on occasion.

All these realities should raise the question, “Why are we continuing to maintain Karluk Street?” The neighborhood does not use nor want it, the executive directors of the nonprofit service providers support its elimination, and its constant drain on our emergency response resources is costly to Anchorage taxpayers. The only current users are occasional vehicle traffic that could be using Latouche Street and the perpetual loiterers and campers who bring constant trouble to neighboring property owners. Despite these facts, the idea of eliminating Karluk Street has not seemed to find any traction at City Hall.

When a public space no longer provides value and instead becomes a liability and a burden to the people in which it is intended to serve, it is time for that space to be eliminated. It is time to eliminate Karluk Street.

Rob Cupples and Darl Schaaff are Third Avenue business owners and members of the Third Avenue Radicals, a volunteer community group focused on the preservation and revitalization of East Downtown.

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