Developers plan downtown hotel, housing at Anchorage transit center site

A hotel, apartments and a ground-floor restaurant and bar may be in store for the downtown Anchorage bus depot on Sixth Avenue, part of a proposal by two developers to transform a long-blighted block in the heart of the city.

Records show developers David Irwin and Mark Lewis have started negotiations with the city development authority on a roughly $45 million project on Sixth Avenue between H and G streets. Draft plans include 120 hotel rooms and 39 one-bedroom apartments attached to the existing eight-story parking structure a block away from City Hall and the Alaska Performing Arts Center.

The Anchorage Community Development Authority, a city corporation that manages downtown parking, owns the parking structure and the transit center. An official declined an interview, saying negotiations were very preliminary.

The proposed plans are the culmination of years of community concerns about the future of the bus depot. Officials and police have said the amount of public space inside attracted criminal activity and unruly behavior among people who weren't there to ride the bus. By 2015, frustration about constant calls to police, firefighters and the Anchorage Safety Patrol about drugs, public drunkenness and other disturbances reached a tipping point. City officials began exploring architectural changes that might calm the near-constant problems.

Read more: https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/anchorage/2018/01/09/developers-plan-downtown-hotel-housing-at-transit-center-site/