Editorial -- Convention center
Conventional center
All the hullabaloo about the proposed new convention center is distracting us from more important issues. The people with vested economic interests are framing the questions, and in the process they are designing a diminished city for us all.
Are we trying to make Alaska as stereotypical, dull, and provincial as we can? Alaska means something - and it is not vast windowless rooms with foldable partitions, and pre-defined tours organized for hundreds and thousands of spectators. Alaska means freedom, and this requires places that reflect our identity, culture that we create ourselves, and meaningful choices about work, entertainment, and learning. It is stifled by the matrix of global culture, which is being imposed on us and which we are also working arduously to impose on ourselves.
Joe Douglas, in the course of his investigation for his page one article in this issue, says that asking questions about the project “is like standing in front of a moving train and saying stop. They’re on a mission. They’re going to do this one way or another. They’re stacking the deck in their favor. They’ve got so many deals it’s mind-boggling. Those who are being impacted have no voice.”
Independent travelers to Alaska will be paying the price when hotel taxes are raised. And so will low income Anchorage residents, who often stay at hotels when they cannot make more permanent arrangements. And so will travelers from Bush communities, who use Anchorage as a base and will now be subsidizing fat cat developers and tourist groups.
Carroll Stockard, an Anchorage architect with an eye for the unconventional and the genuine, says that it is hard to criticize city officials for their support of the convention center. “From the standpoint of city officials, the project makes sense. The center has the potential to generate income that we are not likely to get otherwise. Why would you want to put $93 million into an alternative form of development? Why would you want to attract people looking for meaningful alternatives to the convention center? They don’t have any money. They want cheap places to stay, they’ll sleep out in the wilderness, they’ll hitchhike. Why do you want those people up here? Rhetorically speaking.”
These may be rhetorical questions in today’s world, but they are the questions that we want to ask, and that we will be asking on the pages of this newspaper.