An Alaska village-owned firm services a Queens federal building

A company owned by four small Koyukuk River villages is keeping the air conditioning running at a New York federal building that mails Social Security checks to millions of Americans.

Wasilla-based KCORP Reliance will be paid about $39,600 to service two chillers at the Joseph P. Addabbo Federal Building in Queens — refrigerant work and startup checks on the units that cool the place — under a building maintenance contract it already holds. That contract has grown to nearly $18 million so far, against a ceiling above $53 million, all for the one building.

It's a big building to keep running. The Addabbo building houses the Social Security Administration's Northeastern Program Service Center, which handles benefits for roughly 9.4 million retirees, survivors and people with disabilities — about $15.3 billion paid out every month.

The chiller work is a small piece of a much larger federal-contracting business for the company. KCORP Reliance also holds contracts worth nearly $10 million combined at land ports of entry near San Diego. Its parent is K'oyitl'ots'ina, Limited, the Native corporation owned by the Koyukuk River villages of Alatna, Allakaket, Hughes and Huslia — an interior Alaska company, hundreds of miles off the road system, running the mechanical systems of federal buildings on the other side of the country.