So the other day I noticed a new business pop up at the corner of Spenard and 30th in the old French Oven Bakery, an ammo store. I'm not sure if it's just ammo they sell or whether they also deal in guns. In typical Spenard fashion, within a 100 foot radius from the new ammo shop, there's a flower shop, a liquor store, The Burger Stop, a pawn shop, a Vietnamese restaurant, Cafe Croissant, a ski shop, a motel, a bar, the DMV, and Enstar.
There's some obvious relationships to the ammo shop which seems ripe for trouble. I think the name of the new addition to this area of Spenard is 'The Ammo Can', no messing around with nuance or a clever reference to the last frontier. It's like the gigantic 'Liquor' sign on the relatively new Brown Jug store. I think 'The Ammo Can' should have been even more honest with names like 'Kill' or 'Die' or 'Shoot 'Em'. The obnoxious yellow 'Liquor' sign at Brown Jug might as well be 'Drunk' or 'Wasted' or 'Inebriated'. Spenard doesn't seem to mess around when it comes to names of it's businesses.
The fact that the new ammunition shop is in such proximity to a house of ill repute, a bar, the In-Out Liquor store, and a depressed group of multi-family housing seems to be a dangerous concoction set to explode. Not that i think it's related, but a couple of weeks ago they found a body literally frozen between the walls of the building just to the north of The Ammo Can and the pawn shop.
I'm curious if there's any public hearing process for co-locating a gun store, liquor store, pawn shop, and low income housing. In some circles of business, they would call it 'synergies'; oh mustn't forget the flower shop, to apologize after the crime spree of course.
3 comments:
Have you seen the Hummer they have parked outside the Ammo Can with the depraved, military looking rat painted on it? I am disgusted, as is my 6 year old! And I own and live in one of the (smaller,nicer) depressed multifamily places on 30th, less than a block away. I agree that the placement is very poor - I would love to protest this place out of the neighborhood...sigh. Great blog - keep at it!
Sorry, no offense about that area of Spenard you're in.
Like so many things in Anchorage, there is a lack of planning. Cities, developers, designers, and builders should understand that roads and buildings last a long time, and so does the baggage that follows.
Multi-family housing is a lucrative investment especially in a town which has a shortage of housing. The financial risk is relatively low when compared to commercial real estate. Slums make money. Not that your apartment is in the real slum. (sorry, again)
Oh, no worries...it's a bit of a slum. Mostly it's a neighborhood of low income families that people drive through too fast. Nothing that a little traffic calming and greenspace couldn't fix. Now where did I put that million dollars I was going to spend on sprucing up the 'hood...
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