Wildlife in growing Anchorage likely to sport designer coat

ANCHORAGE — In a city where fashion has always played a distant second to staying warm, a cluster of boutiques in the budding "SoNo" district, south of Nordstrom, does a brisk business in $50 lotions and $180 designer jeans — just one of many signs that this once unruly oil-boom town has been tamed.

Strip malls replace strip clubs, big-box stores draw more customers than bars and residential neighborhoods have supplanted RV parks that once sprawled across the state's most populous city.

The years of oil-fueled booms and busts have given way to two decades of steady growth, as Anchorage's economy has expanded to include burgeoning retail, health-care and tourist industries. Since the mid-1990s, its air-cargo hub has become one of the three largest in the world.

New, non-oil, nonmilitary jobs are helping align the demographics with those of other U.S. cities, said Eddie Hunsinger, a state demographer. The old standby statistic, that men far outnumber women in Alaska, has become nearly obsolete. Home to nearly half the state's population, the city of 270,000 counted 102 men for every 100 women in 2006.

Leese Lloyd and Ashley Brusven, young Anchorage baristas, laugh at the notion that there's an overabundance of men.

"Where are they?" Brusven joked, as customers in the adjacent New Sagaya City Market surveyed a display of stuffed grape leaves, caprese, baklava.

Diversity has also risen as Alaska Natives from rural villages and rising numbers of Hispanics, Pacific Islanders and Asians move in.

"We've got all the different Asian immigrants, the Samoans, the Hawaiians," said Bill Ho'opai, who moved to Alaska from Hawaii in 1982. He works at a Polynesian restaurant near Elmendorf Air Force Base.

As its population grows and diversifies, the city is rejuvenating its aging public facilities. Additions to the modest downtown skyline include a $100 million museum expansion, a $93 million convention center, a collection of new hotels and glass-plated office buildings.

There are critics though: "Rural Alaskans have a love/hate relationship with Anchorage," said Stephen Haycox, a history professor at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. They hate that "people in Anchorage don't have a good understanding of rural Alaska. ... They love that Anchorage has neat things to buy ... and do."

The city's growth has triggered a steady exodus north. About 2,000 people leave Anchorage each year for Mat-Su, the state's fastest-growing area and essentially its first suburb.

While Anchorage is no longer rugged enough to impress those searching for Jack London's vision of the north, the gradual advance of normality has emboldened marketers. The city's latest campaign, called "Big Wild Life," depicts Anchorage life as a mix of bold outdoorsy activities and urban comforts.

Vikram Patel, with the Alaska Immigration Justice Project, is waging his own campaign of persuasion. The Los Angeles native recently sent a detailed e-mail about Anchorage to one of his best friends, hoping to persuade him to move north.

"It's small, cheap, and convenient, but Anchorage isn't the backwoods," he said. "When I go see my friends in Chicago, L.A. or Seattle, I don't feel like they've gotten way ahead of me because they live in the 'real world.' "