In 2013, I began a love affair with the Polaris hotel. Fresh from working on sustainable mixed-use commercial developments in Portland, Oregon I knew there was money for social impact investing and that with a plan and team, the investors would come.
For years I negotiated with the city, the owner, and the stakeholders to bring all the pieces of this complex puzzle into place. Alas, it was not meant to be. By the time I found investors and developer with the vision to see beyond the concrete mountain, years of freeze/thaw on the foundation and the pigeons, had don the building in and now its coming down.
To me, and many others, the site, located in the center of the Golden Heart City, represented a time of prosperity and was a symbol of success. In its current stage, many also believe the site is a foreboding of our town should we suffer another disruptive event, from which we cannot recover.
However, I maintain that in planning for what comes next we can utilize the work I have done and connections I’ve developed to ensure that together we make the best of what comes next. I choose the Polaris as my legacy project because its not a matter of what goes there but a chance to use the EcoDistricts planning tools to conduct a charrette that can be used to plan other building projects, future development plans, an ultimately a dynamic comprehensive economic development plan.
With community support, I made my way to a smart city conference in Las Vegas in 2018. There I quickly learned that there was indeed many ways governments could fund infrastructure and innovation. Most notably by working with private equity partners who see returns from social impact investing, which provides a return for the stakeholders and shareholders in kind.
In exploring what we could do with a 10 story net-zero green building in downtown Fairbanks, the idea of food security came to mind. I organized some discussions on the issue and even brought world renowned expert, Dickson Despommier virtually to show us how it done. Watch the video here.
In 2022 I brought up social impact developer, and former NFL superstar, Garry Gilliam to share his work on the Bridge Ecovillage in Harrisburg, PA as a model for what we could do with the site. in 2023 brought home former Fairbanks City Council member Mark Hewitt to share his work on how we could finance not only a new building but an upgrade to our grid, a new way to plan current and future cities, as well the formula for how high speed transit is the path we should be on to achieve generational prosperity.
This work led to the collaboration between Mark and Garry to offer a $200M letter of interest in support of purchasing the site and developing it as a model for the future of urban development. Economic growth, that would also be supported when the plan is put in place. This led to the creation of the North Star Economic Development District, or NEDD.
