Downtown Cordova will likely be the new home of the Native Village of Eyak’s Ilanka Cultural Center.
The Cordova City Council approved a measure last month to sell vacant city lots on Second Street to the Tribe for its cultural center, emphasizing the importance of expanding Native education in Cordova.
“Thank you so much for your vote tonight,” Brooke Mallory, the Tribal Council chair, told the City Council during the Aug. 20 meeting.
Originally opened in 2004, the Ilanka Cultural Center is the Native Village of Eyak’s (NVE) museum, repository, and library that showcases and celebrates the ancestral Indigenous communities of the region – the Eyak, Sugpiaq, Tlingit, and Ahtna peoples. The cultural center also offers a variety of classes, including traditional Indigenous language and arts courses.
The current Ilanka Cultural Center building sits where First Street meets Railroad Avenue. But the current location, according to the Tribe, is both too small to accommodate all the cultural center’s programming, and it lies in the city’s tsunami zone.
The Tribe, in its proposal, said finding a new, larger space to re-build the cultural center has been a top priority at NVE for the past five years.
“Due to size constraints and building concerns, the NVE Tribal Council chose to take additional time to find a location that would allow for sufficient space for both current needs and future growth under one roof,” the proposal states. “Although there may be properties for sale located on Cordova’s Main Street, they are not large enough to accommodate the size of the building that NVE is looking to construct.”
The seven vacant city lots in question, which sit on the corner of Adams Avenue and Second Street, used to house a city park with playground equipment. But during the 2012 extreme snow event – commonly referred to as “Snowpocalypse” – the weight of the snow crushed the equipment, irreparably damaging it.
City staff removed and disposed of the broken equipment after Snowpocalypse, and apart from using the site as a winter snow storage location, the lots have sat vacant since.
Earlier this year, at the advice of the Public Works Department, city staff decided to solicit requests for proposals (RFPs) for four of the seven lots. The city will continue using the other three for snow storage.
NVE offered the city of Cordova $700,000 to build on the open lots.
According to the preliminary proposal, the Tribe plans to build a new and improved cultural center on the site – which would include the museum, gift shop and Native marketplace, Tribal library, archive center, cultural repository, a recording studio, classroom and program space, a visiting instructor apartment, the Tribal hall and commercial kitchen, meeting rooms, and office and storage space.
The Tribe estimates the whole structure will be between 20,000 and 42,000 square feet, and cost something between $19-39 million.
“The new (cultural center) is designed to enrich the daily lives of Cordova residents by expanding the Native Village of Eyak’s educational, cultural, subsistence, and arts programming,” NVE’s proposal states. “The building will be thoughtfully designed to reflect our local Indigenous aesthetics and values.”
In the RFP, the city requested construction proposals that would take up to five years. However, because of the scale of NVE’s project, the Tribe says it’ll likely take upwards of 15 years to host a grand opening if the project moves forward.
The project timeline was a topic of conversation during the city’s Aug. 12 Planning and Zoning Commission meeting – with commissioner Kris Ranney concerned about the amount of time construction will take, and the potential uncertainties affiliated with the timeline. Ranney originally supported the city’s other application – from Jones Properties, LLC & Soulliere Companies, Inc. – to turn the lots into a mixed-use building with retail space, office space, and multiple rental apartments.
However, the commission ended up recommending the lots go to NVE because of its strong cultural ties to the community.
During the Aug. 20 City Council meeting, members also noted its close proximity to Mt. Eccles Elementary School. The Cordova School District had previously written a letter of support for NVE’s proposal.
“I have been wanting this for the Native Village of Eyak for many, many years,” said Council Member Cathy Sherman. “I think it’s really important and high time that we support the mission of the cultural center.”
NVE could not be reached for additional comments about the proposal, or the project’s next steps.
