The expansion of the Anchorage Museum of History and Art should include nearly 25,000 feet of commercial area on the first floor, which will be rented out for art vendors and art stores. The collected rent at $4.50 per square foot will equal $1.35 million per year of the estimated $3.45 million in operating costs to the city after the expansion.

Without the opportunity to collect this rent, the Anchorage taxpayers have to approve $1.25 million a year extra for expenses on the April 5 ballot and pay them from increased taxes for their homes.

Twenty-five thousand feet for an all-year-round art show inside the museum can include 100 10-foot-by-10-foot booths for local artists and Native art and craft vendors, as well as 10 large 1,500-square-foot private art galleries and studios.

Altogether, this art center will bring more visitors to the museum, who will get the chance to watch and buy the art made not only by dead creators but by the modern artists who live next door and who need more opportunity to expose and sell their art.

To do that we need to ask the architect, David Chipperfield, to change the design of the new part of the museum and add one more floor, underground or upstairs.

---- Fyodor Soloview

Anchorage

SOURCE: Anchorage Daily News,
Anchorage, Alaska, March 30, 2005