Overview
The building enhances the urban environment of downtown Anchorage by providing retail shops, restaurants, and other businesses at ground level with nine floors of parking overhead.
The garage provides more than 840 parking spaces that will consolidate State employee vehicles into one structure. Forty spaces will be available for visitors on State business.
The street-front retail spaces are tucked under covered walkways that form a brightly lit colonnade. The colonnade promotes and sustains pedestrian activity, particularly in winter. Heated sidewalks ring three sides of the building for added winter safety. The retail along F Street forms a strong pedestrian link between the Civic and Convention Centers, Performing Arts Center (PAC), and the Egan Center. Retail along E Street and 7th Avenue draw pedestrian circulation to the Convention Center from E St. Entries to retail are from the colonnade. New sidewalks will be wider than the existing sidewalks and will receive pattern and texture. Bike racks, seating units, and kiosks are included as site amenities.
The exterior façade has a varied composition, beginning with vehicle barrier cables sleeved through the columns, which are in turn enveloped by a skin consisting of two types of metal louver panels, along with voids, that create dynamic and ascending diagonal patterns. The 7th Avenue façade will feature a site for public artwork. The delicate glass enclosed stair tower and elevator lobby anchors the plaza at 7th Avenue and F Street, and is balanced by a similar glazing system that encloses the stair tower at the alley and E Street. The overall composition of vertical and horizontal skin elements serves to break up the scale of the facility and create a layered effect on the facade.
The garage employs a “camelback” circulation pattern for vehicles to facilitate timely exiting movements at peak departure events. The park-on ramping occurs on three sides of the structure, with a flat horizontal tier at the 7th Avenue elevation.
Construction of the Linny Pacillo Parking Center began February 1, 2007, and is scheduled for completion by the end of September, 2008.
