{"id":7856,"date":"2015-12-21T09:02:00","date_gmt":"2015-12-21T17:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/lawmakers-may-move-from-offices-costing-4m-to-lease\/"},"modified":"2015-12-21T09:02:00","modified_gmt":"2015-12-21T17:02:00","slug":"lawmakers-may-move-from-offices-costing-4m-to-lease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/lawmakers-may-move-from-offices-costing-4m-to-lease\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawmakers may move from offices costing $4M to lease"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>ANCHORAGE \u2014<\/strong> Lawmakers are a step closer to moving out of office space in Anchorage that costs $4 million to lease.<\/p>\n<p>The Legislative Council voted Saturday to recommend that lawmakers pull funding for the lease, while also carving out 45 days to try negotiating a competitive purchase price, the Alaska Dispatch News reported.<\/p>\n<p>The office space was renovated and priced almost six times more than what had been a $680,000 lease.<\/p>\n<p>This year, lawmakers expect a $3.5 billion state budget deficit.<\/p>\n<p>Developer Mark Pfeffer said he was willing to drop his asking price by $1 million from $36 million.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe know you need to save money,\u201d Pfeffer said. \u201cWe believe there are reasonable ways to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A spokeswoman for Pfeffer said in a statement that they believe it\u2019s possible to save state dollars without breaking the lease, which she called a drastic step.<\/p>\n<p>A legislative attorney estimated a possible lawsuit over breaking the lease could cost $2 million. An ongoing lawsuit challenges the legality of the state\u2019s no-bid lease extension following the renovation.<\/p>\n<p>Cost estimates vary for buying the renovated offices versus moving into the state\u2019s Atwood Building. One estimate by state debt manager Deven Mitchell says Alaska could generate a $1.2 million return in 10 years by buying the building through a particular type of financing.<\/p>\n<p>Another report, this one by the office of council chair Sen. Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, said moving could save $2 million in comparison to buying the renovated space.<\/p>\n<p>Stevens\u2019 office previously estimated moving would cost $30 million less over the course of a decade than buying the renovated building.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ANCHORAGE \u2014 Lawmakers are a step closer to moving out of office space in Anchorage that costs $4 million to lease. The Legislative Council voted Saturday to recommend that lawmakers pull funding for the lease, while also carving out 45 days to try negotiating a competitive purchase price, the Alaska Dispatch <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/\">News<\/a> reported. The office [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-7856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7856","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=7856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7856"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=7856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}