Anchorage owns an aging arts center, and repairs keep outpacing the budget

The Anchorage Assembly takes up a heating repair at the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts on Tuesday that has run 71 percent over the figure it approved in May.

The Assembly budgeted $200,000 then to replace the antifreeze that circulates through the building's heating loop. The low bid came in around $263,000, and with related work the full cost is $341,330, so the administration is asking for another $141,330. The same request sets aside money to plan replacements for the electric cabling that keeps ice off the gutters and for the boiler stack, which is deteriorating.

The city owns the building, which opened in 1988, but has never run it. A private nonprofit, Alaska Center for the Performing Arts, Inc., has operated it since under a management agreement that sets aside 10 percent of the building's revenue for capital repairs. Much of the current repair money is drawn from that reserve.

The operator says the building needs more than it has. In a letter to the community last year, the nonprofit wrote that it "has been unable to secure funding necessary to maintain the building," and that deferred repairs threaten both the building and the organizations that use it. It paused its Broadway Alaska season, canceling a scheduled run of The Lion King, and cited infrastructure and safety needs among the reasons. Its website lists no season for the coming year.

The item is on Tuesday's consent agenda, the routine measures the Assembly approves together.