From project 80s to the present: resurgence of construction in Anchorage recalls earlier time.

• Author: Orr, Vanessa

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Back in the early 1980s, Alaska underwent a building boom, funded by oil royalties gleaned from the newly constructed trans-Alaska oil pipeline. As millions of dollars poured into communities, much of that money went toward improving the state's infrastructure. This was especially true in Anchorage, where new buildings-including the Egan Civic and Convention Center, the Performing Arts Center, Sullivan Arena and Z.J. Loussac Library-began rising from the dirt to forever change the city skyline.

This building boom, known as Project '80s, helped to revitalize a construction industry suffering from the completion of the pipeline. During its heyday, the pipeline employed more than 30,000 construction workers; when the project was completed, only a third of the work force remained. Once the oil started flowing through the pipeline, however, construction took off again as the state got its share of oil profits.

Though many of the projects built during the early '80s were publicly financed, such as a $23 million expansion of the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, the private sector spent large sums of money as well. Before the boom ended in 1986 as a result of falling oil prices, the Frontier Building, Arco Tower (now ConocoPhillips) and the Hunt Office Building (now the Atwood Building) were taking shape.

"In the 1980s, we saw construction creep towards midtown and south town, and the development of most open areas," said Dick Cattanach, executive director, Associated General Contractors of Alaska. "The difference between construction in the '80s and the construction we're seeing in Anchorage today is that there are not a lot of large plots of land left to develop; we're building up and not out.

"Another major difference is that Project 80s largely used public money for construction, and today's projects are funded through other sources," he continued. "For example, when the Egan Convention Center was built in the 1980s, the state paid for everything out of surplus petroleum dollars. The new convention center is being paid for by an issuance of bond; the citizens of Anchorage will be responsible through a revenue tax increase on bed taxes."

Other factors have changed over the years as well. In the 1970s and '80s, the Alaska construction industry went through a number of upheavals, ranging from the building and completion of the Alaska pipeline, to the massive drop in the price of oil, to the grounding of the Exxon Valdez...