Cook Inlet Housing authority's 3600 Spenard: building up affordable housing and the Anchorage community.

• Author: Anderson, Tasha
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Building Alaska

Cook Inlet Housing Authority (CIHA) develops housing to follow their vision of "Independence through Housing." CIHA recently completed the development of two properties in East Anchorage and has one project under development in Spenard. The completed projects are Creekview Plaza 49, located off Muldoon Road and DeBarr Road, which offers housing for those aged fifty-five and older that can live independently, and Grass Creek North I, located off of Muldoon north of the Muldoon Fred Meyer, a mixed-income development with both income restricted and unrestricted units and bedroom sizes ranging from one to four bedroom units. 3600 Spenard, which is a mixed-use building located on the corner of 36th Avenue and Spenard Road that will feature retail space and residential housing for a variety of household incomes, is currently under construction.

CIHA's Director of Public and Resident Relations Sezy Gerow-Hanson says, "All of our developments are built to address affordability, which also addresses homelessness and other issues. Were in the business of building, primarily, affordable housing."

3600 Spenard

She says that 3600 Spenard's anticipated completion date is August of this year; they broke ground on the project in July 2016. 3600 Spenard is owned by CIHA, was designed by KPB Architects, and The Peterson Group is the project's contractor. Construction will take fourteen months, but planning for a project like this is complex and takes much longer.

First and foremost, CIHA needs to secure site control. In the case of 3600 Spenard, the property was actually two separate parcels purchased at different times. One was a parking lot for a business that previously existed on the corner, PJ's. "We were a little bit bursting at the seams with our folks, our employees, business partners, and our clientele, so shared parking became, as we have grown, a little bit more challenging. So we bought that parking lot for our employees to overflow to," Gerow-Hanson says. It was later, after PJ's had been seized by the US Marshals Service and sold at auction, that CIHA purchased the second parcel, about five years ago, she says.

Having secured the property, "You come up with a concept design," Gerow-Hanson says. 'You don't go to full design, but you envision." She says that CIHA has to consider parking considerations, how big the building can be, what size of units, what the mix of units will be, if the property will have retail space, etc. "It's kind of like...