Sky-high plans set in motion for tower

5TH AVENUE: 24-story building would have working, living space.

A San Francisco-based developer has restarted a downtown Anchorage building project that would combine luxury condominiums with offices, shops and parking in a 24-story tower on Fifth Avenue.

Joe and Maria Fang, owners of Peach Investments, also have made an offer to buy the 4th Avenue Theatre, which is directly behind the lot on which the new tower is to stand, and might use it to expand the project, city officials said.

"This will be the tallest building downtown when it's done, and there's nothing else like it in terms of usage," said Al Barrett, the city planner who's overseeing the development.

The new tower will stand 288 feet high, according to project plans. It will have the most floors, but it will be a few feet shorter than the 22-story, 296-foot Conoco Phillips building.

The Fifth Avenue tower will go up on what now is a parking lot west of the Key Bank Plaza, which the Fangs also own. Construction is expected to start next spring and be finished by 2009, Barrett said.

The Fangs did not return phone calls seeking comment Tuesday.

They first proposed a mixed-use, high-rise development on that site in 2000, when they had designs in hand and the city permits that would have allowed them to build it.

But they put the project on hold after Sept. 11, 2001, noting a weakened economy and wariness about living in tall buildings after terrorists hijacked airplanes and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York.

Last fall, the Fangs submitted updated plans to the city that laid out essentially the same project, though slightly larger than their originally envisioned 22-story structure on the 130-foot-by-100-foot site.

The top 12 floors will house about 58 high-end condominiums of various sizes and configurations, including two-story townhouse-style units. Those with north- and west-facing windows will feature sweeping vistas of Cook Inlet, Mount McKinley and the Alaska Range.

Five floors of offices will be connected to the Key Bank building, with access through its existing elevators as well as elevators from the six parking levels, which together will have 146 parking places. The ground floor and a mezzanine will house shops and restaurants, the project plans show.

They describe the building exterior as being either clear or blue-green glass walls on the upper levels and a metal architectural grill on the lower levels that will conceal and ventilate the parking areas.

Mayor Mark Begich has promoted such a mixed-use approach to downtown development and last spring tried to spur a similar project that would combine a city-owned parking garage with private housing, offices and shops at Third Avenue and G Street.

However, officials scrapped that plan last fall after a seismic study revealed that it would cost too much to build a structure that would stand up to a major earthquake.

Even though the Third Avenue and G Street idea didn't work, Begich pointed to the Fangs' plans as proof that the concept of high-density, mixed-use development is valid.

"It's exactly what we've been talking about but better because it's a private developer," he said. "The market is ready for this."

The mayor said he's been meeting with the Fangs regularly for months, and they've been very considerate of the community's concerns while making their plans.

One big concern is what will become of the 4th Avenue Theatre, which abuts the Fifth Avenue tower site.

Theater owner Robert Gottstein, who put the place up for sale last summer, said the Fangs have offered to buy it, although he wouldn't provide any details and said he doesn't know what they would do with it.

"There isn't any deal right now," he said.

Gottstein said he has invested more than $3.5 million in the building since he bought it out of foreclosure 15 years ago, and he is interested chiefly in finding a buyer who will preserve the historical character of the 1940s-era structure.

Begich said that's important to the city as well, and the Fangs appear sympathetic.

Begich said he and his staff met this week with Joe Fang who had asked to discuss the possible development of the 4th Avenue Theatre site.

"He came to us to say, 'What do you want us to do?' " Begich said.

The designs on file with the city planning department don't include the possibility of extending the project over to Fourth Avenue.

On Monday, the Planning and Zoning Commission gave the go-ahead on the parking portion of the Fifth Avenue tower project. The rest also is likely to be approved without any snags, since it is fundamentally the same as the project that was cleared in 2000, the planning department's Barrett said.

What are people saying about mortgages today:

Rates on 30-year mortgages edged down last week to a seven-month low. Mortgage-giant Freddie Mac reported Thursday that 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages fell to 6.3 percent, down slightly from 6.31 percent two weeks ago. It put rates at the lowest level since they were at 6.24 percent the first week of March.

Bank of Hawaii, Central Pacific Bank, Territorial Savings Bank and Wells Fargo Home Mortgages all cut their 30-year mortgage rates to 5.75 percent this week.

Most people think of a mortgage as a means to an end. After all, you buy a house, not a home loan. But a mortgage is much more than the path to homeownership. It is a financial instrument that must be managed, just like any other financial investment.