Mental Health Trust weighs a below-market lease for a youth treatment provider

The Alaska Mental Health Trust is considering leasing its Anchorage office building at 2600 Cordova Street to Volunteers of America Alaska for $3,266 a year. The Trust puts fair market rent for the property at $326,586 in the first year, a hundred times that.

Over the 10-year term, the Trust's notice estimates the value of that uncompensated use at a minimum of $3.2 million. That is not rent the Trust is certain to lose; it is what the space would be worth at market, and the notice does not say the Trust has another tenant for it.

VOA Alaska already runs its main office and outpatient services from the building, and the Trust Land Office works out of the same address. The nonprofit provides behavioral health and substance use treatment to young people and families at low or no cost, and runs mental health services inside Anchorage schools.

The Trust holds land to generate money for mental health services, which is why the notice calls this a beneficiary-related use, meaning the land serves the Trust's mission directly rather than through revenue. It has done this before. Trustees approved a similar lease to Assets, Inc., which the Trust estimated at a minimum of $2.9 million in uncompensated use, and a parallel recommendation covered Catholic Social Services.

The full board has not voted, and a vote would not settle it. The Trust Land Office issues its own decision afterward, which opens a second comment period. Only people who comment during a notice period can later ask for reconsideration, and that request costs $500. When the Assets lease came back for a final decision in April, the office recorded that no comments had been received.

Written comments on this one are due by 4:30 pm Sept. 16, to [email protected].