Anchorage’s Aspirations: Project 80s, Then and Now

A Decade of Transformation

The immensity of the PAC caught Costello’s attention in 2005 during a honeymoon visit. “We walked by this building and couldn’t believe that a community of this size had an asset like this,” she recalls. When a job opened up at the PAC, she jumped at the opportunity to move to Alaska.
“I can’t imagine Downtown Anchorage without the PAC,” she says.

Before the PAC, the block between Fifth and Sixth Avenues was known as Anchorage’s “skid row,” packed with bars and adult entertainment. In 1979, the firms of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates of New York and Livingston Slone, Inc. drew plans for a civic auditorium. Critics immediately wondered if it was too large, too ostentatious for the city.

The $71 million building stretched into F Street, and the right-of-way has been blocked ever since. The Anchorage Assembly voted 10 to 1 to name the PAC in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., but a political backlash left the building without a proper name to this day. (King eventually got an Anchorage tribute with a road dedicated in 2010.)

Political activism also led to the creation of Town Square Park adjacent to the PAC. The block across Fifth Avenue had been reserved for future parkland, so a citizens committee insisted that Project 80s not interfere with that designation. When half of the block became the Egan Center in 1984, the town square development was part of the bargain.

Named for Alaska’s first state governor, William A. Egan, the $31 million center satisfied the city’s need for a facility to host larger meetings. Anchorage architect Edwin B. Crittenden designed a 45,000-square-foot building with some unique features. Elevated booths in the ground-floor Explorers Hall allow language interpreters to assist with international gatherings. Also, the ficus trees in the lobby required a special floor to irrigate their roots.

To make way for the Egan, the city demolished the original Loussac Library, built in 1952 and named for Zack Loussac, who ran Anchorage’s first drugstore and served a term as mayor. His philanthropic foundation had funded the downtown library on the same block as Anchorage’s historic city hall.

Many of those city hall functions shifted to Midtown, where the Anchorage Assembly chambers were incorporated into the new Loussac Library. The castle-like edifice, with three cylinders linked by a massive bunker, opened in 1986.

Cylinders are a common motif at the four corners of the Sullivan Arena, completed in 1983 at a cost of $25 million. Part of the Chester Creek Sports Complex along with the nearby baseball and football fields and indoor and outdoor ice sheets, the arena is named after George M. Sullivan. The first mayor of the unified Municipality of Anchorage got the ball rolling on Project 80s buildings, while his successor, Tony Knowles, presided over ribbon cuttings later in the decade.

Daily Activity

The Sully, as the arena is known, has seen busier days, hosting concerts, trade shows, and graduation ceremonies. It was the home of the Alaska Aces professional hockey team until that organization folded in 2017. UAA played hockey there until 2019. The arena hosted the Great Alaska Shootout college basketball tournament each Thanksgiving from 1983 to 2013. The following year, the university opened the Alaska Airlines Center, and the on-campus arena has cut into the Sully’s turf.

Last summer, the Anchorage Wolverines of the North American Hockey League relocated home games from the 700-seat Ben Boeke to the 6,200-seat Sully. After the season wraps up in April, the arena is scheduled to host comedian Tom Segura. Rock band Five Finger Death Punch is booked to play the arena in August.

Not that it’s a contest, but the Anchorage Public Library system boasts of serving more visitors than the Sully. Nearly a million annual visits are spread among four other branch libraries while the headquarters at Loussac oversees circulation of more than 1.7 million books, media, and digital materials each year. Like the Anchorage Museum expansion and the Downtown Transit Center, it’s a Project 80s building that sees traffic nearly every day of the year.

The Egan has remained busy even though the Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center grabbed its crown as Anchorage’s premier meeting venue in 2008. ASM Global manages both buildings under a contract through Visit Anchorage, the nonprofit tourism bureau.

“If you live here and you’re maybe not Downtown as frequently, it’s really easy to not see the impact here. We have thousands of guests that are going through here on a daily basis,” says Rader of the Egan. “There’s a ton of activity; this is not an empty building.”

On the day of the interview, for example, while the US Bureau of Indian Affairs was meeting at the Dena’ina, the Egan’s downstairs conference rooms hosted the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, and a boxing ring upstairs was set up for Thursday Night at the Fights.

“I think there’s a lot more going on in Anchorage—when it comes to meetings and conventions and being a cruise hub—than a lot of people realize,” Rader says. “All summer long, this is really a cruise hub for Anchorage.”

Not having a waterfront cruise ship terminal, Anchorage adapted the Egan to that purpose. Holland America-Princess, Royal Caribbean, and Premier Alaska Tours use the curb frontage on Fifth Avenue to load motorcoaches and process luggage. Passengers can wait in the conversation pits in the expansive lobby. The building has evolved into Anchorage’s front parlor.

In addition to managing the Egan and Dena’ina, ASM Global used to manage the Sully. But that was before the global pandemic.

Wear and Tear

Five years ago, the Sully provided space for Anchorage’s homeless population to congregate at a safe distance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Stepping up as a shelter resulted in damage that Project 80s builders never anticipated, and entertainment functions were interrupted for three years.

Upon reopening in 2023, the Sully was under new management. Instead of Anchorage Convention Centers, the city tapped O’Malley Ice and Sports Center to operate the arena. Steve Agni and the late Sig Jokiel founded the organization in 1999, and it has grown into the largest sports facility operator in Alaska, owning and/or managing the O’Malley Sports Center, Kelly Connect Center, Dempsey Anderson Ice Arena, and the Ben Boeke Ice Arena.

The contract lets O’Malley collect 50 percent of the profits after deducting operating costs, while the city remains responsible for upkeep of the Sully, Ben Boeke, and Dempsey Anderson arenas.

The management situation is different at the PAC. The city pays Costello’s organization a flat fee, which covers about 20 to 25 percent of operating costs. Ticket sales and fundraising fill the rest of the budget.

“We’re pretty scrappy, and we make a lot happen with very little. However, after thirty-six years and limited investment, the building is in need of modernization,” Costello says. The punch list includes everything: plumbing, HVAC, theatrical lighting and sound, seats, and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“We were built right before the ADA became law, so there are a number of things in this facility that weren’t addressed at the time of construction,” Costello says.

Indeed, the PAC was rushed to completion. Costello observes, “Our administrative offices, we sandwiched them in under the Atwood Concert Hall. But there was supposed to be a shared services and administrative building (that included a rehearsal studio and offices), but that never came to be.”

Lifetime Alterations

From the moment of its completion, the PAC suffered from a leaky roof. A 2005 revenue bond funded a fix. While the roof has been repaired, Costello notes that the bond is still ten years away from being paid down.

Another minor alteration occurred in 2009 when aisles in the Atwood were widened by a few inches so that masked performers in The Lion King could safely step through the house. That modification will pay off again when the show returns to the PAC next season.

Loussac Library was likewise born defective. The original design called for a parking garage with a second-floor entrance, but the economic decline of the mid-‘80s forced a change. The garage was scrapped, and library visitors had to brave a massive outdoor stairway, which was notorious for ice buildup until it was renovated in 2018.

The Sully received a $9 million renovation in 2015, including new seats, improved acoustics, and a video scoreboard as a hand-me-down from the Cow Palace south of San Francisco.

One upgrade at the Egan that wasn’t feasible in the ‘80s is the addition of rooftop solar panels. The building now has 212 panels supplementing its power supply. Rader says the energy savings over eight years is expected to exceed installation costs, totaling $700,000 in savings over the lifetime of the hardware.

“We’ve made some really great improvements in the last five years,” Rader says.

About twenty years ago, one of the most visible alterations was a skybridge over Fifth Avenue connecting the Egan and the PAC. The structure might seem frivolous, but Jennifer Ramsey, director of sales and marketing for Anchorage Convention Centers, says it has been useful. Performers at the PAC sometimes use the passage to make appearances at Egan events. And Ramsey says she recently fielded an inquiry about the skybridge hosting a twenty-person dinner overlooking the bustling avenue.

Upcoming Upgrades

Keeping the Project 80s buildings as shiny as when they were new takes constant maintenance. At the Egan, for instance, Rader says, “We’re doing a barrel glazing project to repair the west entrance and skybridge.” That project will refresh the distinctive curved glass roof that shelters summertime tourists.

The Egan and Loussac Library are also due for elevator upgrades. “Everything has their lifespan, so you reach the point where it makes more sense to go through the full modernization. They upgrade the cables and everything along those lines,” Rader explains.

Consolidated Contracting & Engineering won the job for the elevator modernization, totaling more than $1 million between the Egan and Loussac. Meanwhile, Visser Construction has a $434,331 contract for repairs to the Sullivan Arena plaza this year.

At the PAC, modernization is part of the Project Anchorage proposal for public improvements funded by a municipal sales tax. Whether adopted or not, and whether the PAC remains in the list of capital projects, Costello says upgrades are overdue.

“We are behind in technology, everything from sound to lighting. There are modernizations that we made along the way, as we’re able to find funds, but those investments are significant,” she says. For example, the house lights in the Atwood were partially converted to more efficient LED fixtures, but not all of them. And for stage lighting, LED instruments that can “throw” 100 feet or more are the state of the art, but they are expensive.

Now that the PAC is a co-producer, with the Nederlander Organization, of the Broadway Alaska series, the need for up-to-date stagecraft is more urgent. Costello says the first couple of seasons made do with the PAC’s old equipment.

“The Broadway shows are unique in that, because they tour to so many different kinds of venues, they bring a lot of their stuff. But that also increases costs,” she says. “We can’t say to them, ‘Don’t worry. You don’t have to bring that because we have it here for you.’”

In a way, the citywide investments proposed for Project Anchorage are an echo of Project 80s, driven by the same spirit of civic pride, but without the windfall of revenue.

Lucky to Have

During the oil boom of the ‘70s, the population of Anchorage surged from less than 50,000 to nearly 200,000. Presiding over that era as mayor from 1967 to 1981, George M. Sullivan envisioned a municipality with public buildings worthy of a grander city. In the next decade, Sullivan saw the vision take shape in concrete, steel, and glass.

While many of Anchorage’s historic buildings are 100-year-old cottages from the original townsite or mid-century relics of post-war expansion, Project 80s planted functional landmarks that signaled the city’s aspirations to world-class status.

“It’s iconic,” says Rader of the Egan Center’s glass barrel façade. “I think it adds allure for Anchorage. Beautiful design.”

Yet the buildings are only as monumental as the users who fill them. Of the PAC, Costello says, “This building is such a gift, and we are lucky to have it. It’s the home to many dreams and transformational experiences for all of our community.”

The library, museum, performing arts center, and other public facilities benefit the whole community. Costello says, “It’s part of what makes a community a community. A way for us to gather, to connect, to grow.”