Private construction keeps industry busy: projects across anchorage and beyond.

• Author: Harrington, Susan
• Position: CONSTRUCTION

Anchorage has a busy construction season going. Much of it is public funded infrastructure such as roads and schools. However, there are many private projects across the city and in the area.

The four-story office building at the corner of C Street and International Airport Road was getting glass installed in late May. JL Properties is developing the 100,000 square-foot project. General contractor Davis Constructors and Engineers, Inc. expects completion in October.

* The Gallo Center, located at 131 West Dimond Boulevard across from Costco, is a strip mall multi-unit retail and business center. Construction began last summer and is expected to be completed by September 1. The owner, Abraham Gallo, opted to build out of pocket instead of financing the multi-million dollar project, which is more than forty thousand square feet. Several of the twenty units are already leased out and plan to open in September. More tenants are currently under negotiations to occupy the remaining units. Anchorage-based Marathon Construction is the general contractor.

Chad Graham, agent and owner of Graham Commercial Real Estate Consultants, says Gallo Center is the second mall he's developed with Gallo in the last three years--the Bella Vista Center on Old Seward Highway near Dimond Boulevard opened to full occupancy when it was completed.

* Going south on Old Seward, between Klatt Road and Huffman Road, dirt work was well underway in early June for construction of a multi-unit storage facility.

* The Legislative Information Office Building Remodel at 716 West 4th Avenue in downtown Anchorage began construction in December 2013 and is slated for completion this December. Pfeffer Development, LLC is the developer on the sixty-four thousand-square-foot project, with kpb architects and design-builder Criterion General, Inc. rounding out the team.

* Also off Old Seward, The Islamic Community Center, acting as owner and general contractor, is continuing work on its mosque located at 80th Avenue and Spring Street. Construction of the core and shell began in 2010 on the seventy-thousand square-foot lot.

* At Old Seward and 72nd Avenue, Whalen Construction expected to start construction the second week of June on a $3.22 million, three story, twenty-six thousand-square-foot building for the Motorcycle Shop, which has outgrown its Dowling Road store where it has been located for the last forty years. Construction is expected to be complete in November.

* The Wat Alaska Yanna Vararam Buddhist Temple Meditation Center of Alaska's addition was completed this spring by general contractor H. Watt &amp...