On the eve of its 100th birthday, the Hellenthal Building \u2014 more commonly known as the First National Bank Building on Front street \u2014 is about to change hands again. First National Bank Alaska, the building\u2019s current owner, has put it up for sale.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a great time to divest of that property,\u201d said Luke Fanning, the bank\u2019s Southeast Alaska vice president. \u201cThe core of our business is no longer downtown anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
The core of business is now a little less than a mile away on W. 10th street, where First National Bank recently opened its new building to serve as a hub for the bank\u2019s Southeast operations, Fanning said. The sale of the Hellenthal building, which is situated in downtown\u2019s historic district, is the most recent development in a consolidation effort that the bank started last fall when it began building its new location. Earlier this year, the bank demolished its old Channel Branch, also located on W. 10th street, to make room for the new building\u2019s parking lot.<\/p>\n
The L-shaped Hellenthal Building straddles the Triangle Building and has frontage on Front and N. Franklin streets. It contains the now-defunct Palace Theatre and a \u201crich history,\u201d which Fanning, a life-long Juneauite, said he would like to see restored. <\/p>\n
The building was built in 1916, and it holds a spot on the National Register of Historic Places. It has played host to several different businesses over the years. The bank is now the sole occupant of the almost 6,000-square-feet, three-story building, which contains \u201ca lot of vacant space,\u201d Fanning said. This is because \u2014 like so many other buildings downtown \u2014 the building has not aged gracefully. <\/p>\n
\u201cThese were buildings built around the turn of the century, but they haven\u2019t had a lot of work done on them in the last 40 years,\u201d City Lands Manager Greg Chaney said. \u201cTo bring them up to current standards would take a lot of investment.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the Hellenthal building is no different. Chaney last toured the building about a decade ago, but he said that it was in pretty rough shape the last time he saw it. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all pretty derelict right now,\u201d Chaney said, describing the building. \u201cThe plaster is falling off the walls, and the plumbing isn\u2019t functioning. It\u2019s going to take a lot of capital to make that livable.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is exactly what Fanning hopes for the building, however. The city assessor\u2019s office estimates that the land and building are worth about $1.7 million together. The current asking price for the building is $600,000 \u2014 which is what the land alone is worth, according to the city assessor.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a huge building,\u201d Fanning said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of potential in it, but we\u2019re bankers, not developers. It\u2019s going to take someone with a vision to restore it to what it could be.\u201d<\/p>\n
And it has the potential to be something great. There is already one vacant 1,000-square-foot apartment in the building, but Chaney said that \u2014 with the right developer and plan \u2014 the building could support five or more additional apartments. The building could potentially help ease Juneau\u2019s housing pains, which are at their worst in the downtown area. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt could make a big<\/em> difference in revitalizing the downtown core,\u201d Chaney said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of space that could be used for housing in there. It would be phenomenal.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On the eve of its 100th birthday, the Hellenthal Building \u2014 more commonly known as the First National Bank Building on Front street \u2014 is about to change hands again. First National Bank Alaska, the building\u2019s current owner, has put it up for sale. \u201cI think it\u2019s a great time to divest of that property,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":21546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-21545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21545"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=21545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}