Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson is hoping to open Sullivan Arena to 300 homeless residents, twice the amount allowed in city code. The Assembly is suggesting an alternate path.
Mayor Dave Bronson is pushing to open Sullivan Arena to shelter 300 homeless residents, rather than the 150 allowed in city code and in an emergency shelter planthis week. Administration officials are arguing the city-owned former Golden Lion Hotel needs repairs before it can be used to house unsheltered people, and that using the hotel also presents legal challenges.
Assembly members are suggesting a different solution: They instead want to lease 50 rooms in the Spenard-area Alex Hotel to shelter 100 people and increase capacity at the Sullivan to just 200, according to a Friday statement from Assembly members Felix Rivera and Chris Constant. A special Assembly meeting will be scheduled “as quickly as possible” to discuss options other than doubling the size of the planned shelter, including using the Alex Hotel rooms for non-congregate shelter, Rivera and Constant said in the statement. The Assembly’s initial plan for emergency winter shelter included using the Sullivan to shelter 150 people and leasing 85 rooms in the city-owned former Golden Lion Hotel in Midtown, which would house about 120 people or more. Meanwhile, about 350 homeless residents are living unsheltered in Anchorage, including about 200 in Centennial Park Campground. The city has not yet stood up emergency winter shelter for them. The city has a legal obligation to stand up enough cold weather shelter for its homeless residents once temperatures drop to 45 degrees — a deadline that passed days ago. Late Thursday, the mayor announced the city would transport people living at Centennial to Sullivan Arena on Saturday — back to the same building that was used as the city’s COVID-19 era mass homeless shelter, until the Bronson administration shuttered it in June and moved homeless residents to the Northeast Anchorage park.Bronson so far has not said whether or not he will use the Golden Lion, but on Friday his administration released a memo from an attorney for the city concluding that using the former hotel is not legal under a city ordinance, and that using it for transitional housing would require completing a planning approval process and a parking variance process, which could take months.The mayor’s office on Thursday sent the Assembly afrom the city’s homeless coordinator, outlining reasons for a delay in opening the Golden Lion and requested that the Sullivan shelter be increased to 300 people. In the letter, homeless coordinator Alexis Johnson listed several issues that would delay using the former Midtown hotel for more than a week, at the least. Johnson said she needs “immediate guidance from the administration on a path forward to ensure stability and continuity for our city’s most vulnerable population.” Johnson included a separate letter written by Henning Inc., the nonprofit that the city selected to run both operations. Its executive director, Shawn Hays, requested the delay in opening the Golden Lion because the building needs maintenance and repairs. Hays asked for a surge capacity of 300 people in Sullivan Arena. About 40 toilets need repairs, doors need to be rekeyed and the city must ensure all fire alarms and carbon monoxide detectors are working before the Golden Lion building can pass the required fire inspection, Johnson said. The administration should work with the Assembly to increase capacity at Sullivan Arena in the meantime, Johnson said. City code governing homeless sheltering and the Assembly’s legislation for winter shelter currently both limit the size of any shelter in Sullivan Arena to 150. “This creates barriers for people wishing to access emergency cold weather shelter. If the capacity cannot be increased, my concern is we will not have adequate low-barrier shelter. This decision could result in loss of life when temperatures drop below freezing,” Johnson said.An increase to 300 would “recreate the previous issues that existed” during the building’s two-year lifespan as a mass shelter, according to Rivera, who is also chair of the Assembly’s Committee on Housing and Homelessness, and Assembly Vice Chair Constant. Residents near Sullivan Arena have reported frequent break-ins and theft, drug use and graffiti. They also say they’ve witnessed or have been victims of violence over the two years that the city used the arena for a mass shelter. Many have implored the city to come up with plans to mitigate impacts to neighborhoods, to provide better security and to keep the shelter much smaller if the city must use Sullivan Arena for homeless sheltering again. “It is important that we do everything in our power to avoid creating another mass shelter at the Sullivan Arena. The alternatives that will be brought forward allow us to avoid this mistake,” Rivera said in the statement. The Bronson administration has also pushed the closure of Centennial Park Campground by one day, to Saturday at 5 p.m. Bronson had previously announced he would close Centennial on Friday, and before Thursday’s announcement, many homeless residents were left uncertain and worried about where they would go.Emily Goodykoontz is a reporter covering Anchorage local government and general assignments. She previously covered breaking news at The Oregonian in Portland before joining ADN in 2020. She earned her degree in journalism from the University of Oregon. Contact her at egoodykoontz@adn.com.
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