A few Fairbanks City Council members are clashing with Mayor Mindy O’Neall on the next steps for the site of the demolished Polaris Building in downtown.
The friction comes as they grapple over a request for proposals to redevelop the site, with a council resolution aiming to push an RFP that the mayor is trying to evaluate further.
“We need to get going with this. We’re years too late,” Councilmember Jerry Cleworth, the resolution’s sponsor, said at Monday’s regular meeting.
Built in 1952, the old high-rise was abandoned in the early 2000s and stood vacant in the middle of downtown for about a quarter century. The city took ownership of the decrepit Polaris Building in 2019, later securing about $13 million in combined state and federal funds to topple it. The Fairbanks North Star Borough also agreed to waive an estimated $1 million in landfill tipping fees, totaling about $14 million in financial support for the project.
City contractor Coldfoot Environmental Services completed demolition last summer while former Mayor David Pruhs was in office. During the project, he and a working group had started on post-demolition plans for the site – also amid criticism from some council members, who sought more involvement in the process, leading to a series of council work sessions.
Pruhs hoped to open the RFP last fall, but he lost to O’Neall in the municipal election in October before it was published.
In November, O’Neall asked for council feedback on the RFP. Now, backers of the council resolution want to release a version of the document edited by council members, which proponents say balances latitude for developers with the city’s preferred outcomes for the site.
The draft RFP says the city is hoping for a multi-story structure with mixed uses, like a building with both residential units and retail spaces. The document also says the city would prefer to sell the property to a developer and not retain ownership or provide financial support.
But O’Neall is stretching out the timeline that had taken shape under her predecessor, and she said she plans to wait until May to publish a proposal request.
“We don’t have a vision. I want to put together what’s in this RFP into something that folks can see, that they can feel, that they can touch,” she said Monday.
O’Neall said her office will organize public events to gather more input and possibly amend the RFP so that the document more specifically reflects community desires. O’Neall also didn’t count out supporting ideas that would require the city’s continued financial involvement.
“I do not want this to be something that we put out to a developer to tell us what they want at their own benefit,” she told the council.
Councilmember John Ringstad was among the three present members Monday who supported the resolution. He said the existing version of the proposal request leaves wiggle room for developers to show what kinds of ideas they’re willing to put money into.
“That’s what’s going to make or break any of it,” he said. “We can ask for the Taj Mahal. And we’re not gonna get it just because that’s what somebody wants.”
Beyond next steps for the Polaris site, the measure raised broader questions about legislative and executive powers at the city. O’Neall told the council that, whether the resolution passes or not, issuing RFPs is an executive function.
That drew frustration from Councilmember Sue Sprinkle, who served on the working group under Pruhs and helped edit the RFP in the months after O’Neall’s victory.
Sprinkle said she was “disappointed to think that it could be completely ignored.”
At the request of Cleworth, City Attorney Tom Chard weighed in. He said the mayor is correct that the administration puts out RFPs and told council members that they will ultimately determine the fate of the site by approving or disapproving a final project.
“So, I think it would be in everybody’s interest to work collaboratively on this iterative process, understanding that you have the final say,” he said.
A resolution doesn’t have the same legal force as an ordinance, Chard said, which could more directly affect the administration’s course of action.
The resolution had been postponed from a previous meeting, and the council, made up of six members, initially took a vote 3-2 in support of the measure on Monday, with Councilmember Lonny Marney absent.
But later in the meeting, Chard noted a procedural miscue, saying the city charter indicates that three votes aren’t enough to pass a resolution and that O’Neall, as mayor, should’ve been given the chance to break what was effectively a tie. The council then unanimously opted to postpone the measure again instead of redoing the final vote.
In the initial vote Monday, Councilmembers Valerie Therrien and Crystal Tidwell were the two no votes. They were among the most vocal critics of Pruhs’ handling of the RFP last year, at the time sponsoring a failed resolution that aimed to make all the working group meetings publicly noticed.
On Monday, they were most willing to wait and see what O’Neall’s office comes up with.
“I think being extremely intentional about the space is very important to our community,” Tidwell said. “That’s what I want to see.”