The Flourishing Mat-Su Valley.

• Author: ESS, CHARLIE

We drove north, a family of four on a recent Saturday night. We took the Parks Highway past Wasilla's bustling strip malls and a flea market, all the while keeping to the mission of pleasing our palettes. We wanted Merlot and calzone, maybe something with sweet potatoes and black beans-then to finish it all off with French truffles or cheesecake.

We ended up at the Cadillac Cafe.

The burgers were grand, the cheesecake a delight. And then, Mark Wilson, the manager, led us to a counter near the oven where a chef brushed olive oil onto disks that he'd cut out from pizza dough with an empty tuna can.

"Try these," he said. "We call them sand dollars."

When they had browned slightly, the chef pulled them from the open, birch-fired oven. He and Wilson topped each with diced onion compacted in a mound of salmon-flavored cream cheese.

We left that night hooked on the little pastries and wanting for nothing. But it occurred to me on the drive home that we had sampled something larger, the distinct taste of diversity, the wares of a business we wouldn't have found in the Mat-Su Valley five years ago.

Valley residents marveled at the building of the strip malls in the early '80s: They saw them fill, then empty. And while cynics made jokes about knocking out the interior walls and opening indoor rifle ranges or go-cart tracks, others took up the movement to relocate the capitol north to the Valley from Juneau.

That's all in the past. The Valley has new malls; the old ones are full. Steel buildings are well stocked with auto parts, pet food and pumps, and the tops of the greening hills gleam with the chrome of car dealerships. The two largest grocery stores have been open 24 hours a day since the early '90s, and the Valley has the marts. There are two landfills, a half dozen car washes, and at least two places to wash pets. One can't keep tabs on the number of coffee shops and espresso stands. Entrepreneurs reopened a brew pub and built a German restaurant.

"The growth in the business activity is largely due to the growth in the population," says Neal Fried, a labor economist with the State of Alaska. Fried says that nearly 70 percent of the growth in businesses has been with the retail and service sectors of the industry. In time, businesses will specialize, Fried predicts. To wit, Lee and Jennifer Budde opened Airframes Inc., a shop that builds the skeletons for Piper Supercubs, one of Alaska's favorite bush planes. Seventy-five percent of their...