B Street & 40th Street Anchorage

We spent a year in Washington DC long ago. We explored much of the area and our maps were worn out at the end. I came back thinking that I could take a map of Anchorage and mark off every road I'd been on and that we were small enough that I could
eventually mark off every road.

Well, I didn't. But in the 31 years I've lived here, green open space has been replaced by view blocking buildings of various sizes. Or by new roads like Elmore Road. And quickly we forget what things looked like before and we adjust to the new use of that space.

Both thoughts - checking out all the roads and documenting the changes - came together Wednesday when I ran over to B St between 40th and Tudor to look at the remains of Peter's Sushi. This is a street that is hidden off the beaten path. So let me show you some pictures. First, with the help of Google Earth.

First an overview of the area I'm talking about. The red box is enlarged below. But this is between 36th and Tudor (Loussac and Lowe's) and C Street and Denali. It includes the new Cuddy Family Midtown Park which is pretty messed up in the Google Earth photo and now has a finished speed skating rink and lawns that have just been started. Pictures in the next post. The red star is at the intersection of 40th and B Streets.


Again, part of the documentation here comes from the Google Earth picture below which has dirt where the RE/MAX building is now. You can also see how tiny - just a path really - 40th is between B and C Streets. Pictures of now are below.

This is the red square from the first map with pictures of the buildings that are in the maps. Another way to do this is to go to Google Street map.

4oth and B Streets looking NORTH. On the left is the new RE/MAX building.

This is 40th and B Streets looking SOUTH. Note that whoever built this street didn't consider pedestrians or cyclists because there is no sidewalk.



This is a view from 40th and B Streets looking EAST. There is nothing here but a tiny parking lot and a park entrance. People working in the offices along B Street or people coming to the park from the south have no sidewalk along B St to this park entrance.

This is two pictures loosely meshed together to give you the sense of looking WEST from 40th and B (the red star in the two maps above.) According to the top map, this was just a path not long ago. Looking this way actually jarred, briefly, very briefly, a memory of walking in Singapore at the end of April - looking toward a busy street (C Street) with tall buildings, particularly the glassy Arctic Slope Building.

We ride down streets with lots of buildings that we never go in and we have no idea what goes on in those buildings. So I went into two of the buildings on B Street (the others seemed like there was basically one tenant; 3 buildings were DOWL engineers, another TTT Environmental) and took pictures of the list of tenants.



Above is the Northwest Building and below is the list of tenants in this buiding.






The Park View really has a park view, in the back. I'll put up pictures of the park in the next post. The directory, which looked very good in person, proved to be a bitch to photograph, what with the reflections of the light from behind. As I look at it now, I should have used my flash. Since I normally dislike how a flash changes the mood of the scene, I forget all about it in situations like this. In any case you can enlarge the pictures and squint if you want to read it.




Note that B St. is something of an oddity because A St here for a block or so is in between C St and B St. The dilemma is that north of here is where A street splits off to the right from C St. There is no A St to the south. There are a few tiny pieces of B St to the south (map on right) and a few blocks to the north (map on left)

40th Street is another that appears here and there. A new section of 40th is scheduled to become a reality from Lake Otis eastward through what is now mostly woods and a big hill near the McLaughlin Youth Center. It's the dotted yellow line between A and B in the map.


From the Community Council Survey Capital Projects Needs Ranking Survey : (This is a screen capture of the original so the missing words were like that. You can click on the image to enlarge it.)



Notice the language used here:
traffic calming, increase connectivity, relieve pressure. All sounds really good, until you see another chunk of wild green in the city chewed up and spit out as pavement.

Here's just a bit of this future 40th, looking east from Laurel (another road recently punched through) at the hill south of McLaughlin Youth Center.


And then near the end of working on this I found wikimapia that has Google maps with some of the buildings identified as you pass the mouse over them. I could have gone in and added the names of the buildings I've got here, but this is taking me long enough. In any case, the link above goes to their map that coincides with part of mine.

And you can also go to Google Maps Street view to see this from a somewhat different view of the B Street. I would link it, but I couldn't. You can go to Google Maps and search for 40th and B Street Anchorage and then click on Street View on the top.