A historic downtown Juneau building that hosted the first Alaska Territorial Legislature is being demolished.
David McCasland, owner of Deckhand Dave’s outdoor food court in the adjacent lot, bought the former Elks Hall building this summer. He said Friday that he had hoped for a different outcome.
“Just let them know that I tried. That was my main intention,” McCasland said. “The building was totaled, and it wasn’t saveable.”
McCasland hired NorthWind Architects for the project. Shannon Crossley, an architect with the firm, is also on the city’s Historic Resources Advisory Committee. She said the building sat uninhabited for three years.
“The conditions in the building just got worse and worse,” she said. “Eventually, it turned from ‘How do we save this building?’ to ‘How do we try to try to maintain the façade in some way?’ And then that wasn’t feasible anymore. It was just a really sad story.”
Crossley said by the time the building changed hands, it was far too expensive to save any piece of it.
McCasland had a personal connection to the building.
“I actually worked in it like 10 years ago,” he said. “And I remember being like, ‘Man, it’d be so awesome to own this building. This building is so sweet.’”
McCasland had been making offers on the building for years. Crossley said, in that time, the conditions worsened.
“Because they couldn’t agree on a price for that building, it just languished,” she said.
Erik Emert and Deborah Percy were the previous owners of the building, according to the Alaska Division of Corporations, Business and Professional Licensing. They could not be reached for comment Friday.
The building was built in 1908 and hosted the first Alaska Territorial Legislature in 1913.
“And then the first thing that they voted on was to give women the right to vote,” Crossley said.
On the first floor was a Turkish bath and a bowling alley, and the second floor housed a ballroom. The third floor, where the Legislature met for the first time, was removed in the 1940s, and the outside was renovated to the stucco look it had until this week. More recently, it housed the Rockwell restaurant and bar downstairs.
Crossley said Juneau’s historic buildings hold the authenticity of the town.
“And when we lose that historic fabric, it’s gone forever,” she said. “I would love to see more of a community investment in the historic buildings of Juneau.”
Crossley says public funding that supports preserving and using historic buildings would help prevent this fate for other historic buildings.
“There are many historic buildings in downtown Juneau that could be used for housing, that could be used for many things, but the property owners might not necessarily have the millions of dollars that it’s going to take to bring them back up,” she said.
McCasland isn’t certain of his plans for the lot. In the past he’s publicly talked about creating housing and restaurant space. He said he’s trying to figure out what’s possible financially.
Anything he builds would have to meet the design standards of the Downtown Historic District. Basically, it can’t look too distinct from the rest of the street, Crossley said.
That means it can’t be higher than 45 feet, and needs to have similar design elements to the buildings around it.
