Business

Alaskan & Proud market is shutting down.

Operators of the downtown Juneau store on West Willoughby Avenue were unable to reach a new lease agreement with owners of the Foodland Shopping Center.

The store – sometimes still called Foodland — will close in late August or early September.

Ben Williams, President and CEO of Williams Incorporated, says he talked with every employee individually on Tuesday to let them know about the closure.

“It was a personal thing,” said Williams. “It was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life.”

A few employees may work past the closure to help with the decommissioning of the store.

Williams says he’s offered a severance package for the store’s 75 employees. Some may take jobs elsewhere in the Ketchikan-based organization that includes two stores in Ketchikan and one in Thorne Bay.

He says other Juneau employers – his soon-to-be former competitors — have expressed interest in interviewing his employees after the store closes.

One employee says she’s been working there since at least 1978. James Wilson, 25, says he just started as a courtesy bagger two weeks ago.

“I had no idea this was going to happen,” said Wilson. “I’ll just stick it out with them to the end and then see what’s going to happen afterwards.”

Williams says a few employees may work past the last day of business to help clean and dismantle the store, and prepare it properly for the next potential tenant

Williams declined to provide details about the lease negotiations, but he says it broke down over the proposed amortization of the cost of proposed store improvements.

“It was a very hard business decision,” said Williams.

Williams, Inc. operates two stores in Ketchikan and one in Thorne Bay with 195 employees total.

The Foodland Shopping Center is owned by the Rosenberger family of Juneau, who are represented by John Williams of Juneau Real Estate – no relation to the Ben Williams of Williams, Incorporated.

John Williams declined a recorded interview, but he told KTOO that the owners are seeking a new grocery store to move into the A & P space. He says A & P notified him of the decision not to renew the lease on April 18th, and he’s already had preliminary talks with grocery chains in the Pacific Northwest. Williams says having five months to find a new tenant should help.

The Foodland Center sits on 5.5 acres in the city’s Willoughby District, and has been for sale for more than two years. Williams says the current asking price is $13,500,000, down from the initial listing of $15,900,000.

Besides the grocery store, the shopping center includes the JRC/Alaska Club fitness center, Good Hardware True Value, Foodland Super Drug, and medical and office space. Williams says he thinks all of the other tenants are staying put.

The retail grocery store side of the building was built in 1963, with additions in 1968 and 1972. The health club and hardware store side of the building was built in the early to mid-1990s.

Ben Williams says he’s just the latest in a line of merchants and grocery men dating back to his grandparents.

“I’ve been in this business my whole life,” said Williams. “Fifty-five years now.”

After selling stores that he owned with his father in New Mexico and Colorado, Williams says he worked for a Montana chain. He was then recruited to work in Ketchikan forty years ago by Sitka grocer Lloyd Hames, and later went to work for Carr-Gottstein in Anchorage. Williams says he started Williams Inc. almost 25 years ago. The company grew to as many as six stores when they purchased Juneau’s Foodland about sixteen years ago.

The Regulatory Commission of Alaska has given Juneau’s garbage collection company the go-ahead to implement a new automated roll cart service. But the RCA has not yet approved a monthly container fee for specially designed trash cans.

The RCA on Friday issued an order saying Alaska Pacific Environmental Services, which owns Arrow Refuse, could roll out the new service while commissioners investigate the monthly container fee issue. Alaska Pacific says customers need to use a specially designed trash bin, with a gravity locking lid, in order for the service to be fully automated, and comply with City and Borough of Juneau garbage ordinances.

Alaska Pacific had argued the container fee was a non-regulated service, not subject to review by the RCA. But the commission says that’s a matter for it to decide. The RCA plans to hold hearings in the case, and issue a decision by mid-September.

Alaska Pacific Environmental Services hasn’t said when it plans to introduce the new system. A spokesman for the company said it would release a statement this afternoon or tomorrow.

In the meantime, Alaska Pacific has agreed to cap the monthly fee at $2.95 for a 96-gallon container, and $2.75 for a 48-gallon container. Under the plan, rates for garbage collection in Juneau will initially go down for some customers, and up slightly for others.

In its order, the RCA also granted Alaska Pacific extra time to make the case for a permanent rate for the new service. The company will undertake a cost of service study in 2013 and must file for a new rate by mid-September 2014.

A High-Intensity Activated Crosswalk – or HAWK – beacon is now operating at the Glacier Highway Walmart entrance, one of the busiest pedestrian crossings in the Lemon Creek area.

The HAWK signal has been a priority of the state Department of Transportation, Juneau police and city and borough as well as the Tlingit and Haida Central Council. It was triggered Tuesday, and traffic stopped as some of the citizens and Juneau officials who worked on the project took a safe walk across the road.

For years, Genevieve Cadiente has been a school crossing guard for nearby Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School. She helped get the ball rolling with a letter to Juneau Rep. Beth Kerttula.

“I had stood here for many hours, you know, watching some of the people try to cross,” Cadiente said, “and we’ve held these flags up and nobody’s stopped for us.”

Then in December, two 15-year-old girls were hit by a car while dashing across the street. Deb Temple was a passenger in the car.

“It was about 3:30 on a sideways rainy day,” she said. “They were young women wearing dark clothing, and we were headed towards Costco, and we did not see them.”

The girls have recovered from their injuries. Tempel said the accident catapulted her into action for a lighted crosswalk at the Walmart entrance.

DOT Southeast Region Director Al Clough invited Tempel and Cadiente to push the button yesterday to activate the new HAWK signal.

“OK. Give that a push, let’s see what happens,” Clough said, as the signal beeped. “You can see the yellow light starting to flash. The traffic’s slowing down. The yellow light is full, now it’s red and we can go.”

After the standard time has elapsed (3.5 feet per second), the double red lights begin to flash. If all pedestrians have crossed, motorists can proceed on the flashing red lights.

You can see a visual explanation of the signals at this State DOT&PF webpage.

The HAWK crosswalk at Walmart is the second in Juneau. The first was installed at the Mendenhall Loop Road entrance to Floyd Dryden Middle School. Transportation studies show that no other crosswalk signal works better for alerting drivers to pedestrians.

The original traffic signal at the Walmart entrance was decommissioned in 2008 during construction of the Sunny Point interchange. Another traffic light was installed just north of Walmart at the Egan Drive access road.

DOT data shows approximately 12,000 vehicles drive this section of Glacier Highway every day. A study last June over a period of 12 hours indicates 471 pedestrians crossed the street at various points, with only about a third using an actual crosswalk.

The HAWK signal cost about $200,000 and was paid for by the federal Highway Safety Improvement Program. Clough says the installation cost less because the light poles and utilities were already in place.

 

Alaska Electric Light and Power wants to go paperless.

The Juneau utility has asked the Regulatory Commission of Alaska to revise its tariff to give customers an e-billing option. Right now, the company is required to send each customer a paper bill through the mail once a month.

Spokeswoman Deb Ferriera says about 43 percent of AEL & P customers already use some form of electronic payment.

“Either Easy Pay, or e-check, or direct debit, or our third party credit card processing,” Ferriera says. “So our hope is that those customers will also want to go paperless and this will allow them to do that.”

Ferriera says there would be no additional charge to customers, who would only need to provide a valid email address to sign up for the service.

An e-billing statement looks exactly like a paper bill, but for security reasons Ferriera says AEL & P will not email them directly to customers.

“An email will be sent to the customer saying ‘Your most recent electric bill is now available to be viewed.’ And they’ll be directed to click on a link, and the link will take them to the secure side of our website where they’ll log in with a user ID and a password, and at that point they’ll be able to look at their bill,” says Ferriera.

The Regulatory Commission of Alaska is taking public comments on the proposal, due April 5th. AEL & P wants to start the service in mid-April.

Link:
AELP paperless billing proposal

A major national retailer opens a store in Juneau today.

OfficeMax is the second chain store to open in a month at the Nugget Mall, next to Petco.

Its manager is Juneau’s Chuck Collins.

A few years ago Collins got out of the retail office supply business. A few months ago, he got a call from OfficeMax.

He’d been in the business since the early 1980s and seemed to be enjoying the break. But there was no hesitation when the national firm asked if he’d like to manage the Juneau store.

“When the opportunity arose I was excited about it because I could go back to do it, plus I didn’t have to be on the hook for purchasing all the inventory,” he says.

Collins is the kind of guy who will visit office supply stores while on vacation. And he’s always liked OfficeMax.

The company opened its first Alaska store in Anchorage in 1994. There are now two in Anchorage, one in Fairbanks, and at 17,000 square feet, Juneau will be the smallest.

“This is the first of its kind store that OfficeMax has opened,” Collins says. “It’s a new lay out. It’s a little bit more streamlined. It’s more tech oriented.”

The publicly traded company has more than 1,000 retail stores in the U.S. and Mexico as well as an international contract segment.

Its roots go deep in the forest products industry, organizing in 1931 as Boise Cascade Corporation. It sold the timberland, forest products and paper holdings in 2004. Corporate headquarters are in Naperville, Ill., just outside Chicago.

And since the store has been under construction, “a lot of people from Chicago have been coming up here commenting on how beautiful Juneau is,” Collins says.

He’s been to OfficeMax boot camp; at the Anchorage stores for training; and the company brought managers from Anchorage, Honolulu and headquarters to help launch the Juneau store.

It employs about 25 full and part-time staff members at better than minimum wage, and Collins can truthfully say they are all from Juneau. The company transferred an assistant manager from an Anchorage store to Juneau, but he was previously from the capital city.

“OfficeMax may not be what people will call a local business, but it’s going to be pretty local looking when you come in there,” Collins says. “They’re going to say, ‘Hey, I know that guy. He’s lived in Juneau his whole life.’ ”

The company is one of three major office supply stores that had looked at the Juneau market over the last three years, according to retail consultant David Irwin.

Two years ago, Office Depot was close to opening a store here, then backed off.

Irwin says Staples and OfficeMax were sizing up Juneau at same time, with Staples considering stores in Juneau, Fairbanks and Anchorage.

“They had probably three or four stores teed up and they decided not to go,” Irwin says. “And when they decided not to go all of a sudden OfficeMax came in, literally the next day.”

Office stores have mostly been closing in Juneau in recent years. In August, Capital Office Supply shut its retail store.

The 65-year-old company decided to concentrate on interior design and furniture for professional offices. At the time, owner Ted Quinn said office supplies are cumbersome and a lot of work for not a lot of revenue, especially in these days when supplies are easily purchased at big box stores and over the Internet.

Consultant Irwin, located in Bellevue, Wash., was in the office supply industry for many years. He now works on behalf of Alaska properties, such as Nugget Mall, and retail outlets.

He calls the small capital city – population about 32,000 – “border line” for an office supply store.

“It used to be that the office supply store looked for businesses, small businesses. And then when everybody started getting a computer for their home, or a fax machine, all of a sudden it created this home-grown business,” Irwin says. “And you have a lot of those in Juneau.”

OfficeMax spokeswoman Nicole Miller says the company already had business contract customers in Southeast Alaska, and Juneau was the next logical market. She says the Anchorage and Fairbanks stores do a lot of rural business.

When you enter the Juneau store, the first thing you see is the tech area, with all sorts of electronic gadgets. Look left for basic office goods, toward the back for office furniture, right for just about everything you can imagine in office supplies.

Collins leads the tour:

“We have choices and choices even have choices. We have traditional manila folders, you need third-cut file folders, we got ’em. If you need third-cut file folders with zebra stripes on them, we have ’em,”

I’m surprised to see toilet paper and coffee supplies.

“Businesses need it, too, and we want to supply everything they need,” Miller says.

Collins points to the aisle sporting single-cup coffee makers. “In fact in that aisle you’re talking about we not only have Kleenexes and toilet paper along with wastebaskets and trash bags, there’s even snacks in case they get hungry while they were working at the office.”

Collins already knows the Juneau office supply market well, especially the logistics of getting products here. Now that the store is open, he says he’ll be looking for feedback from Juneau consumers, because every market is a little bit different.

“Back in the early ’90s when I was (also) selling lots of office supplies in Sitka, we used to sell a lot of fish clips. They were actually paper fasteners but everybody in Sitka thought they were fish clips because they put them on the nose of the herring for bait,” he says. “And if we have to get fish slips in here, we can do that.”

Today’s OfficeMax “soft opening,” as he calls it, will help work out the bugs for the grand opening on February 19th.

Bartlett Regional Hospital’s board of directors has named Dennis Stillman interim Chief Financial Officer.

Stillman will take over for Garth Hamblin, who is leaving the hospital when the board’s new consulting contract with Quorum Health Resources takes effect on February 1st. The board previously had a “management services” contract with Quorum, which meant the company employed the hospital’s chief executive and chief financial officers. Under the new agreement those positions will be employed by the hospital.

Stillman has many years of experience in the area of health care finances, mostly in Washington state. His interim post will last up to a year.

Earlier this month, Bartlett announced that former State of Alaska Health Department official John Vowell would serve as interim CEO.

The hospital board plans to hire an executive search firm to help it recruit a permanent CEO, who will be responsible for hiring a long-term financial officer.

Bartlett Regional Hospital is owned by the City and Borough of Juneau, and gets most of its operating funds from fees for patient services. The hospital’s board of directors is appointed by the CBJ Assembly.