Anchorage firm takes $105,000 in GSA repair orders at Tennessee federal buildings

Two new General Services Administration contract awards worth a combined $105,341 will put an Anchorage contractor to work on federal buildings outside Alaska. The GSA's Public Buildings Service awarded Chitina Diversified Services LLC $67,042 to paint and re-carpet Judges Chambers Suite 951 at the Odell Horton Federal Building, 167 N. Main St., Memphis; that work is scheduled from Aug. 24 to Nov. 24. A second award, $38,299 to reconfigure a fire pump at a federal building in Jackson, Tennessee, runs Aug. 19 through Dec. 19. Federal records list the award type for both as unspecified.

Chitina Diversified Services is an Alaska Native-owned small disadvantaged business based in Anchorage. Federal contracting data list roughly $44.3 million in obligated awards to the firm across agencies, about $12.9 million of that from GSA across 49 awards.

The work follows a larger Tennessee project: GSA announced in October 2024 that the firm would receive a $7.4 million contract, including $3.3 million from the Inflation Reduction Act, to underpin the foundation of the Howard H. Baker Jr. United States Courthouse in Knoxville with low-embodied-carbon concrete and steel, work expected to avoid more than 50 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Jeff Smith of GSA said the project "will make repairs to building infrastructure, while using sustainable building materials and investing in small businesses."

Alaska's federal contracting sits inside a contested policy framework. Since a 1986 amendment, the Small Business Administration's 8(a) program has admitted firms owned by Alaska Native corporations without requiring them to establish social disadvantage individually. A 2006 Government Accountability Office report urged tailored oversight of those provisions, and a 2026 congressional proposal would repeal them. At a Commonwealth North panel, ANCSA Regional Association general counsel Nicole Borromeo said the amendment grew out of Native corporations' difficulty developing land inside Alaska's national park system. At an RDC Breakfast Forum, Huna Totem Corporation's Mike Torres said such contractors "deliver value to our shareholders, value to Alaska with the proceeds that they make and reinvest into Alaska communities."