The Juneau Community Foundation and Alaska Legislature are considering a move to add more space to the Capitol complex downtown.
According to a June 15 memo from Legislative Affairs Agency director Jessica Geary, the agency is considering whether to acquire 526 Seward Street, a former bed and breakfast that caught fire in September 2017, killing two people.
[JPD identifies fatal fire victims, investigation into cause continues]
“Since then, it has been occupied by vagrants and is a liability in its current state,” Geary said in the memo. “The Juneau Community Foundation has offered to purchase the building and give it to the Legislature if desirable.”
The joint House-Senate Legislative Council, which makes decisions for the internal workings of the Legislature, declined to consider the matter at its meeting Tuesday, but the building could be a topic of discussion at the council’s next scheduled meeting in August. It has not been scheduled.
“It’s all very conceptual at this point,” Geary said by phone.
Wayne Jensen, a member of the Capitol committee of the foundation, said by phone that “the opportunity to add some property was attractive,” and in its present state, “I don’t think the building has a lot of value for anybody.”
Online registries list the home’s price as $299,000.
According to Geary’s proposal, the foundation would “also help with the demolition costs, currently estimated to be $100,000-$200,000.”
Before the building’s windows were boarded up, Geary said vagrancy was a significant problem.
“Our security detail were catching people in the building pretty much every other night, and we didn’t have jurisdiction,” she said. “There was a real concern they would start a fire, and if the thing went off again, it could be really, really bad.”
The long-term plan for the site is to turn it into storage. That would allow the Legislature to stop renting space in the Goldstein Building (on Seward Street across from Wells Fargo). The Goldstein Building space costs $40,000 per year.
In addition to that cost savings, Geary suggests acquiring the building will reduce the risk to the Terry Miller Building, which is feet away from the burned hulk.
In a separate suggested action with the foundation, Geary said the Capitol’s four columns “need to be shored and honed,” a process that involves filling cracks with epoxy, leveling and polishing the columns. That “large and important project” would cost about $300,000. Half the cost would be paid by the foundation.
The columns were reinforced with rebar during the recent extensive seismic retrofitting project at the Capitol, but there was not enough money in the project’s budget for the aesthetic work proposed now.
“We had of list of things that were on sort of our bucket list (during the retrofit). That was one that didn’t get included,” Jensen said.
As with the Seward Street building, a decision on that item was deferred.
The Community Foundation’s capital fund has ample resources to cover the expenses, Jensen said.
In Tuesday’s meeting, the Legislative Council approved a $144,402 contract for Microsoft software licenses, approved a two-year renewal of its contract with LexisNexis for publication of state statutes, adopted a three-year technology plan for the Legislature, and accepted the cordial resignation of legal director Doug Gardner.
• Contact reporter James Brooks at jbrooks@juneauempire.com or 523-2258.
