A RC H I T EC T U R E & E N G I N E E R I N G
Downtown Glacier A new vision for an old building By Scott Rhode
T
he KeyBank Plaza in downtown Anchorage is no more. The magnitude 7.1 earthquake on November 30, 2018, killed it. Oh, the nine-story building still stands at the corner of Fifth Avenue and F Street, but earthquake damage left it uninhabitable, so KeyBank has vacated as anchor tenant. Now the building is known by its address as 601 W. Fifth. Along with the new name, the building is getting a new look. “The 601 building takes the precedent of the old structure and tries to retrofit it… inspired loosely by Alaska glaciers,” says Derrick Chang, general manager of 601 5th Avenue LLC. Based on that inspiration, the Seattle-based architecture firm Perkins&Will drew a design that strips the skin off the building, reinforces the skeleton, and puts a glazed covering on 33,000 square feet of new rentable space. Slated for completion in summer 2022, the renovation resembles the shiny, oblique angles of 188 Northern Lights, also built and owned by Chang and his family through their development firm, Peach Investments. Whereas that ten-story office tower on top of a three-level parking garage cost about $40 million to build from scratch in 2008, the renovation of 601 W. Fifth has a price tag of at least $30 million, which pays for updated mechanical systems, floor-to-ceiling windows, and potential connections to the Egan Convention Center (more on that later). However, Chang says unforeseen increases in the cost of freight, materials, and labor have driven the total closer to $35 million. In a way, tearing it all down might have been easier.
Just Like Starting Over The tower was originally built for Alaska Mutual Savings Bank in 1972, more than a decade before the Egan Center across F Street and the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts across Fifth Avenue. Even without the 2018 quake, the building was due for an upgrade. Brad Hinthorne, managing principal for Perkins&Will, describes the ‘70s vintage design as “precast concrete with strip windows, kind of a V shape, [and a] blank wall facing the parking lot.” Not very attractive for new tenants. 42 | February 2022
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