Empire Archives is a series printed every Saturday featuring a short compilation of headline stories in the Juneau Empire from archived editions in 1984, 1994 and 2004.
This week in 1984, life’s been a bit tough lately for downtown businesses that don’t cater to tourists. First the state moved the Department of Education and Transportation from the Goldstein and Simpson buildings, meaning hundreds of state employees would spend their noon hours shopping and eating outside downtown. Then the Baranof Hotel fire and the renovation of the Senate Building increased construction activity on North and South Franklin streets, cutting parking and possibly discouraging shoppers from coming downtown. Now the Marine View office and apartment building is shutting down, taking its residents and up to 200 office workers out of the downtown area. Mix those with the shift of the area’s population base to the Mendenhall Valley, add the spurt of new stores opening in the valley, toss in the lack of parking downtown and you have the ingredients for a tinge of concern by downtown business owners.
Today many of those elements remain the same — cruise-related businesses dominate the downtown area, the city is planning to move its employees out of the Marine View Building, and problems such as a lack of parking continue to be prominent issues.
Original Story: “Downtown businesses adjust to changes,” by Chuck Kleeschulte. 8/23/1984.
This week in 1994, Bill Hudson expects to have a role if a Republican becomes Alaska’s next governor, just not the one he sought in Tuesday’s primary election. The 61-year-old Mendenhall Valley state representative lost his party’s lieutenant governor nomination to North Pole Sen. Mike Miller. Hudson said he hopes to be named to Jim Campbell’s transition team if the Anchorage businessman wins the Nov. 8 general election. But Hudson’s lopsided primary loss left him feeling disappointed and a bit betrayed. “We were running against a stacked deck with the closed primary, low voter turnout and confusion at the ballot box,” Hudson said. With 463 of 468 precincts counted, Miller, 43, marched toward a 21,396-11,603 vote lead over Hudson, who left behind four terms in the House to run for lieutenant governor.
Hudson would go on to be reelected to the state House between 1997 to 2003. Today Republican candidates in particular are expressing a different unhappiness with Alaska’s primary election, which are now open races where the top four finishers regardless of party advance to a general election that is decided by ranked choice voting.
Original Story: “Hudson wasn’t close,” by Ed Schoenfeld. 8/24/1994.
This week in 2004, what’s left of the burned building at Front and Seward streets will come down, leaving 17 business owners searching for new locations or plans. Some of them considered their rented space in the building destroyed by fire a week ago to be more than a place to work. “We loved our business,” said Bernadine Peterson, who, with her husband, Brian Lupro, owned Nail Jazz. It had been open longer than anything else in the mall. Friday, the day the city got word of the intended demolition, was the eighth anniversary of its opening, the owners said. The Juneau Town Center, as the 108-year-old building has been known recently, housed 16 other businesses and leased a corner to an artist working in fossilized ivory. Tom Huntington, owner of the building since 2001, faxed a letter to the city Friday saying he plans to demolish it “as soon as the governmental authorities will allow it.” The city earlier in the week declared the building a public nuisance and gave Huntington until the end of Monday to state what he planned to do with the property. Huntington voluntarily halted any work on the building, said John Stallone, chief of enforcement for Alaska Occupational Safety and Health.
Today the site has been resurrected as Sealaska Heritage Institute’s Walter Soboleff Building.
Original Story: “Burned building to come down,” by Tony Carroll. 8/22/2004.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
