Some news and opinion as of September 18, 2024
City Council Protests The Mecca’s Liquor License. The Protest arose because the sidewalk in front of the Mecca – if not the Mecca itself – is a troublesome neighbor to the rest of 2nd Avenue and beyond. The city council will reconsider their decision to protest the license on Monday, September 23. The city is on firm ground to address the conduct of the business as it relates to what happens on the sidewalk. Interested citizens can listen or testify starting at 6:3 PM next Monday in City Council chambers.
NOTICE: Release of Contact Information. The Winter Solstice Festival is the week of December 14-21, 2024. As Festival planning takes shape, a big change is that FEDC will concentrate their Moose on the Loose Scavenger Hunt downtown for 3 days, synergizing with Festival activities, bringing extra holiday traffic. They need you, the Festival needs you, to participate. So we will connect the service and retail portion of our membership rolls to FEDC so that their staff can get you in on the Hunt.
Emergency Service Patrol is Not Exactly “Dismantled.” It is true that the city has no contract with a third party to respond to calls for service made by or on behalf of chronically inebriated people in public spaces, but it is not true that those calls aren’t being answered. The police and fire departments are responding to as many of those calls as they can. It’s a staffing shortage issue with the ESP. It’s the city’s personnel shortage to solve, and it’s part of the Downtown Association’s mission to help, so we’re trying. ESP as we knew it may not come back, but a method will emerge to manage the intensive needs of chronically inebriated people per Alaska Statute Title 47.
If you have given to the ESP program in 2024, please read on . . . . The city has had contract expenses with the ESP in 2024 (up until the staffing wore thin, then stopped in April), so donations made in 2024 to the ESP have been remitted to the city to help pay contract costs. Open invoices are in abeyance until we have a plan to address Title 47. We will seek no further individual, private sector or grant funding for the ESP until we have that plan.
Borough’s Downtown Plan Not the City’s Plan. The city did conditionally adopt the Borough’s plan earlier in the year, which adoption lapsed when the Borough trod on the city’s conditions. It sounds serious, but we think it’s a technicality. It’s the Borough’s plan because the Borough has the ‘planning power’ and the Borough has adopted it. On the ground, though, when it comes to implementation, there’s stuff in the plan the city is already working on and other stuff the city won’t mind other parties taking initiative to implement. These things below – and more – are elements within the plan and are happening while the City and the Borough patch over the part that sounds serious.
- Polaris – Slowly leveling it while learning how to induce development on the city-owned portion of the Polaris site, we must acknowledge that demolition delays elongate the grind for immediate neighbors.
- Alaska Motor Inn – The new owner will address the problems there before year-end, which we have heard will be to demolish and haul away the entire 2-story, wood framed portion of the building, leaving the East-West-oriented, 3-story, cinder block portion intact to revive as some mix of offices.
- Dangerous Buildings in General – Due to its wranglings with the Polaris and the Alaska Motor Inn, the city had a vigorous growth spurt that recognizes the benefits of cleaning up dangerous buildings. The city passed an ordinance creating blight definitions and requirements for correcting. The city also created a new staff position (in the mayor’s office) to identify and work dangerous buildings through the legal process to something better. The carrot to those sticks has been slower to emerge but City Ordinance 6285 is brewing until December to induce new development in Fairbanks.
- Parking Reform Via Borough Ordinance 2024-25 – The gist of this ordinance: parking has swamped downtown such that excessive parking is a barrier to business growth because of the Borough’s expensive and land-hogging parking requirements. So this ordinance would make big and small changes to balance convenient access with the hoped-for arrival of new buildings. A ‘shared parking program’ is in development to help prepare for when – if – downtown undergoes new development on the parking lots we know and love.
- One Notch Better Snow Removal – This Fall, new signage will appear in the downtown core, which is 1st-5th Avenues, Wickersham to Noble. “No Parking Monday 1am to 6am” will make one night a week available on a recurring basis for Public Works to remove snow or sweep gravel in the summer, continuing the upward trajectory of the city’s maintenance services in the core. Some will be caught up and towed by this initiative – but a grace period extending through the end of the year will see warnings citations under the wiper blade.
Grow your business or nonprofit with the Interior Economic Growth Fund! Golden Valley Electric Association (GVEA) and the Fairbanks Economic Development Corporation (FEDC) are teaming up to administer this USDA program to support local economic development. Apply now to fuel business growth and job creation in our community. Application deadline is September 30. Learn more and apply online at www.gvea.com/iegfund.
Leadership Fairbanks – The Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Fairbanks is among the only professional development programs in Fairbanks and the deadline to register is fast approaching. Register at 2024-2025 Leadership Fairbanks
With Festival Fairbanks, the Downtown Association shares an office at 510 2nd Avenue, Suite 115, 99701.