Juneau Assembly OKs $1M loan to revive downtown Gross-Alaska Theatre for housing

The shuttered Gross-Alaska Theatre building in downtown Juneau is poised to get a new life as home to 22 new apartments, including 20 that are considered affordable units. 

Bạn đang xem: Juneau Assembly OKs $1M loan to revive downtown Gross-Alaska Theatre for housing

On Monday night, the Juneau Assembly unanimously approved a $1 million loan to help renovate the former movie theater on Front Street into an apartment complex. The money comes from the city’s Affordable Housing Fund.

The city created the fund to address the lack of affordable housing in Juneau and uses the money to promote more rental housing and single-family homes. 

Zachary Kohan is a co-partner of BroKo Holdings LLC, the developer. In an interview Tuesday, he said he grew up going to the theater as a kid. 

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“It’s a fixture of downtown, and to have the ability to potentially bring that back is exciting, and to have the city behind us is very exciting,” he said. 

Reviving the theater building into new housing has been an idea circulating for at least a decade. But it hasn’t come together until now.

The building used to have two retail storefronts, the theater and apartments, but the apartments have been out of commission since the ‘90s. The theater itself closed during the pandemic. 

Kenny Solomon-Gross, the vice president and general manager at Gross-Alaska Theaters, said the cost to revive the apartments was always too much for his family’s business to take on. The company owns another theater in the Mendenhall Valley and is in the process of selling the downtown building to BroKo Holdings. 

View the full BroKo Holdings, LLC funding application here.

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“Speaking for my family, we are really excited that the Gross building is going to come back to life again,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “For them to be able to get that loan to be able to make those apartments again, come back to life, we are super excited about that.”

Loans from the Affordable Housing Fund are just one way the Assembly is incentivizing developers to construct more affordable housing. Kohan said the funds are crucial to the project. 

“We’re in a high interest rate environment, and to be able to secure rehabilitation funds, it just brings the cost down,” he said. “That’s been the biggest constraint and the prohibitor, I think, for providing new housing supply in Juneau.”

The plan is to offer 16 one-bedroom and six two-bedroom apartments at the site. Twenty of the apartments will be rented to people who make 80% or less than the Juneau Area Median Income, at a monthly rent of about $1,900 for a one-bedroom, and $2,200 for a two-bedroom, per the loan requirements. 

Kohan said the company is still finalizing the building purchase, so it is unclear when construction will start. According to its application with the city, the company plans to have the units ready within three years.

The company originally requested $1.1 million, but the Assembly approved only $1 million at the meeting on Monday. After the vote, Assembly member Christine Woll requested the Assembly add the remaining $100,000 to the loan as well. The Assembly will vote on that at a later meeting.