Juneau is actively planning and moving forward with the construction of a new Capital Civic Center, according to the project’s executive director Bob Banghart the Civic Center’s purpose is to provide Alaska’s Capital City with an essential and vibrant community cultural and conference center located within the Áak’w Village Arts and Culture District.
“‘I’ll take us back to the early 80s, when Centennial Hall was first being designed and built.” Said Banghart, “Centennial Hall was built as it is, with an idea that there would be an addition later that would support performing arts and the arts itself. So about 10 years ago, a group of people got together to say, we need to do this.”
According to Banghart, the process of designing the new Civic Center started with an independent standalone building in the vicinity of Centennial Hall, but the group kept running into opposition, “We started listening to the different, diverse voices in the community, and then pandemic hit us.” Said Banghart, “during that process, the city approached us and said, what if we were to join the two buildings together and see about looking for some synergy that could be generated there. So the city put up some money, and we did just that, we designed a facility that conjoined what we had programmatically in the standalone building with Centennial Hall.”
The project has overcome significant challenges in recent years, including high construction costs and community opposition.
“In August last year, we came up with an idea, and we shopped it around. Took a lot of evaluation of it. People were saying, we like this, we don’t like that.” Said Banghart, “predominantly, we were looking at just joining the two buildings together with a large common space that proved to be, again, non-viable because it completely eradicated all the local parking in the area, and the cost to operate was looking like it might be outside the boundaries that we were able to afford.”
The proposed facility, an addition to the existing Centennial Hall, will feature a 299-seat professional theater, expanded lobby space, a gallery, and a flexible “black box” performance area.
Banghart described the project as a strategic response to community needs. “We’ve designed a facility that not only meets current event management challenges but creates new opportunities for community gatherings,” Banghart explained.
The $60 million project has already secured significant community support, with over 140 local donors contributing more than $10,000.
In terms of timeline, Banghart says he’d love to see the Civic Center break ground in 2027, “That’s funding pending right? the city is not on the hook to do any of that, other than what they’ve already contributed, contrary to some people’s beliefs, we are on a full court press to raise the money. We’ve been having some very strong successes.” Banghart said “So we’d love to see it happen in 27, we’ll see the documents completed next year.”
Though Banghart says there’s uncertainty on the federal end of things, he’s optimistic about contributions from the Coast Guard, “they’ve been very positive. They see a lot of application for the building’s use. We’re right across the street from them.”
The City and Project, the founding nonprofit, are jointly managing the Civic Center project, sharing design phase costs.
Interested community members can follow the project’s progress at capitalciviccenter.org.
