Commercial Real Estate in Midtown Anchorage Pleases the Eye

Most of what’s written about real estate is the economics of the subject. Mortgage loans. Prices and terms of sale. Costly legal pitfalls. Returns on investment for commercial properties. Absorption of lots in subdivision developments. There’s less discussion of the esthetics of real estate. For once, let’s step back from the numbers and just keep our eyes open. Let’s notice some very appealing real estate around us. And consider how the physical structure can be used to echo a company’s marketing objectives.

This is an easy tour to take. It’s Midtown. Midtown became a commercial center in the 1970’s. There is more land around the buildings than downtown, so building owners have something to work with that building owners downtown don’t have. These buildings are newer. They exploit new design concepts. They experiment with different materials.

Start with the Alaska Energy Building at Tudor and B Street. A traditional steel and glass structure, it marks the gateway to Midtown for an arriving business person. Nothing special as such buildings go, but an impressive structure with concrete parking areas on several levels around it.

A more pleasing view of Midtown begins at 36^th and A Street. Another steel and glass building, Frontier, marks the southwest corner and has a covered glass walkway above the street to the five-level parking building. Those tenants and visitors get to stay out of the weather when they visit the state offices that make up a good part of the tenant mix. On many mornings the flare of the sun reflects on 36^th for the west-bound traveler, delivering some surreal lighting effects.

First National Bank across the street continues its theme of brick buildings at its expanded South Center location under construction. Is there enough parking? It’s uncomfortably close to A Street, while all the other buildings are well back from it. Brick is a nice contrast to the steel and glass look that makes for the visual pollution of many American cities that expanded rapidly in the 1980’s.

To the right, at 36^th and Denali, is the Loussac Library. A delight to the eye, it is one of the few buildings in Midtown that is not at street grade. The architect put it mostly on a hill, drawing the eyes upward, perhaps to garner respect for the knowledge it contains. Two rounded portions face the southeast and the Chugach mountains. It’s a great place to spend a half hour for lunch, time with a kid,  or to commune with the geese when they arrive in the spring and when they feed on the grass as they prepare to leave at this time of year. Shortly, clouds of Bohemian waxwings will gorge on the fermenting mountain ash berries, and flop around half drunk, quite a show. The scene would be complete if the Municipality could get the fountain to work.

Back along A Street keep your eyes right. There’s nothing very exciting about the older twin Calais buildings on the left. Instead, consider how clever the owners of Johnson Tire were with their new building. It’s one-story, painted beige with a brick-accented front. Around most of it runs a blue stripe with a yellow edge and the name of the business. The visual emphasis echoes their advertising. As locally-owned consumer-oriented business in a competitive environment, here’s a firm that understands how various forms of advertising can be synergistic: each reinforces the other, magnifying their name recognition.

Next up on the left gets my vote as Anchorage’s most visually appealing commercial building, Bivin Plaza. Designed by architect John Kumin, it is all brick, with stepped-back levels facing south and a curved arch with a keystone. What is remarkable about this building is how unobtrusive it is, despite its four stories. When I used to work there and gave people directions I’d say “come to the big brick building at the corner of Benson and A Street.” Silence. “It’s really big, all brick,” I’d repeat. More bewilderment, often followed by “what brick building?” It is that unobtrusive and understated.

Across the street is WalIMart. I typed it that way because again it’s worth considering the impact of signage on market identification. The paint job is generic WalMart: gray, with blue and red stripe. Over the door, though, the color changes to dark blue, to set off the logo (with the star in the middle) which is white lettering. The star echoes the American flag on the roof, another standard WalMart building fixture.

Barnes and Noble understands this principle, too. Study the new face they put on the former Longs Drug location. The beige and light beige, the columns with the finish elements at the top, give an elegant bookcase look to the store. Note how well the name stands out on the building. Compare their sign with Gary King behind them, which put its logo on the building on top of a vertical design element, instead of framing it into the building’s design and paint schemes.

At Key Bank perhaps they don’t know these signage principles or don’t care as much about the general consumer market. There are two prominent signs on their building: neither belongs to them. Wedbush Morgan Securities has its sign on top of the building for all to see. Looks like they own the place. Harry’s restaurant has a bright yellow awning with its name on it. There is a sign that says Key Bank Plaza on the east side of the building at street level. You can barely see it as you whiz by the drive-up teller exits. Too bad, because this is one of the more appealing buildings in Midtown, with its recessed square windows. (The BP building, the east end anchor of Midtown, is about the only other major building with square windows, by the way. Those are flush with the exterior.) The really clever thing about Key Bank Plaza was the decision to set it at a 45 degree angle with the street grid. Where is it written, after all, that every building has to line up with every other?

Even some strip malls in Midtown have done facelifts recently. The old B&J mall has a new accent across the top. Pink and turquoise may be strange colors, but they tried. Maybe one can’t expect more from the income stream where one anchor tenant is Kentucky Fried and the other is Lucky Strike Bingo. City Mortgage did better with its building on Fireweed, one of the first older one-story buildings in Midtown to get a new look.

A building can be small and still visually appealing. USKH, the engineering firm at A Street and 26^th, has wood siding, a maroon metal roof, attractive angles and is tucked behind several full-sized birch trees. It looks like an inviting place to work. More impressive, of course, is the CIRI Building, owned by Cook Inlet Native Corp. Five stories of glass and steel, it is probably the best maintained commercial building in Anchorage, with a permanent maintenance crew that militantly takes care of the grounds and interior. A separate landscaping contractor maintains the five-story atrium with its seasonal greenery and floral displays, full-sized trees and flowing water course. The birch trees on the southeast side soak up the spring sun reflections and are therefore about the first in town to pop leaves.

Anchorage’s Midtown is a work in progress. So we have to put up with some ugly, in prime locations. The thorns among these roses are the A Street Alignment and Auto Repair at A Street and Northern Lights, with its used motorhome and fleet service, boats for sale and a building that although red, white and blue, hardly inspires patriotism. As an eyesore it competes with the Arctic Office Supply Quonset hut facility across A Street. A former indoor sports facility, this is extending its economic life of into dotage. Let’s hope the immense ice dams and huge icicles this poorly-insulated building produces don’t fall on someone before the facility is replaced with something that further enhances Anchorage’s diverse Midtown commercial real estate scene.