A Look Back...

Since there isn’t any fishing to be had at the moment,  here is a little look back at the hangar and the progress we have made.  It has been a long journey and a lot of work!  If you have been following along through our recent ordeal dealing with our beloved city government and the effort to undermine all our work here,  I thought I’d share a photo journey through the past few years.

A look back at the Yakutat WWII Army Hangar since 2007:

If all you knew was what the fly shop looked like on April 1st, 2008, it would be understandable to think the sale of the hangar to us for only $10 was “interesting” to say the least.

 

The Hangar, in all her unrenovated and neglected glory in February 2007 – the week we started…

 

She looks great when a space is finished, but it has been a very long process to get to this point.

Same view, just a year earlier. And this is after three days of hauling garbage to the dump

 

When some moron looks at the hangar and declares it to be of great value and that the municipality should have been given the opportunity to acquire it (along with these improvements)…

…THIS was the reality of the building when we accepted responsibility for it.

 

Yep! They wanted nothing to do with the responsibility of dealing with this building when they had every opportunity to be responsible. 30 years of failing to act – failing to invest their time and money into the Yakutat Hangar, only to try now to get their hands on it… What a pathetic joke.

 

It hasn’t been all construction on the physical building of course – we handbuilt all our displays as well. The countertops in all the bathrooms will be concrete with embedded fossils, I’ll be making the toilet stall dividers out of salvaged aircraft skin to make them look like pieces of wings, etc. I’m trying to make the hangar into a really special place and these details go a long way to complete the package.  But it takes a lot of time…

 

A place to hang the waders…

 

Tables and racks from local spruce and alder…

 

The shop seemed like such a huge space to fill – until we actually started filling it! Now we realize just how limited it is…

 

The first customer’s car parked in the lot…

 

The shop looked great, but the outside still looked (and still looks) like hell…  Not exactly the most inviting exterior for a “mall”,  but that siding is 40% asbestos and can’t just be taken down willy nilly.  Nor can we just replace those broken windows…  The old steel frames are so rusted away that they can’t hold glass.

 

One of my favorites from the folks that seek to undermine our efforts has been their complete and total lack of understanding of what is involved in renovating this building.  A year ago this month,  Yakutat was hit by a 100+mph windstorm that caused one of the big hangar doors to structurally fail.  Pieces of rusty metal went flying through a fabric-covered airplane and also damaged one of the metal-skinned planes.  The doors are not fixable.  There is so little metal left after 70 years of rusting that they can not be salvaged.  How much are new doors?  Well,  actually we have new doors,  but DoorTech wants about $500,000 to install them.  1/2 million dollars to install new doors on the hangar.  When I announced that the hangar was unsafe for aircraft storage last year,  there was yet another whiny complaint to the State of Alaska – that if “he” had been given the lease on the hangar instead of to me,  the first thing “he” would have done was secure the doors.  Really?  Where exactly would that money have come from?  It wouldn’t.  And nothing else would have been done on the hangar either.

Complaints from other “players” were filed with the state because we were not putting the original windows in.  In Byron’s e-mail to our senator and congressman,  he states that the building could be maintained with an original period look.  This is an echo to the “wrong windows” complaint…  To fabricate these windows would cost upwards of $2 million dollars.  They would all have to be created by hand and would be cold,  wet and would not make the building useable long-term.  There was a reason the FAA and Weather Service abandoned the hangar in the mid-70′s.  Yep!  We’re already $2.5 million into the cost of the building just to change out the hangar doors and the windows.  Add at least another million to abate the asbestos…  As yet,  there wouldn’t be a single dollar spent to renovate the building itself.  No wiring,  insulation,  siding,  flooring,  sheetrock – anything to make the building useful in any way.  And exactly what of the condition of the building?

Here is what the second floor looks like for half the building – a floor completely collapsing. The city is really going to restore this building? Is ANYONE willing to actually fix this besides me? Hell no. If they say they would, they are lying – or completely stupid.  I’m definitely in that latter category…

That photo above looks up at the floor for the old “original” WWII movie theater.  The theater operated into the mid-1970′s.  In other words,  when the city took over the lease and responsibility for the building,  this area was fully functional and had been continuously maintained.  The above condition is a direct result of the City of Yakutat’s leasing and maintenance of the Yakutat Hangar.  They shouldn’t be given the building back,  they should be charged with a crime.

 

On to the second floor… Here is the work midway through… There is a crap-load of mudding to do. If I was paying an hourly wage for all this work, the cost would be so extremely high that it wouldn’t be possible to afford. Since our city’s electrical power infrastructure is literally collapsing and they can’t afford to maintain what they have,  why would they think they could take this project on?

 

 

The two side office buildings (with the hangar bay between) are 16,000 square feet.  In the cost of materials alone,  I could have had three houses built so far…  and I have a LONG way to go.

 

10 foot 2 inch high ceilings in the new kitchen

 

Same room when we were done with it. These gate-fold tables built into the window sill are in one of three kitchens going into the building, along with 13 bathrooms.

 

Mudded…

 

Same room after paint and trim. Still waiting for the new floors though. 

 

 

4am on April 1st, 2008 – the shop is ready to open in a few hours and we’re about to head to bed. Completely exhausted and spent. Cities don’t work this hard. They don’t put their very heart and soul into a project like we have.  If they did,  the hangar wouldn’t have been neglected at their hand in the first place.

 

Just in case anyone is confused as to what it takes to salvage a building like this,  or what it costs,  I hope you have a better understanding now.  The outside still looks like crap and we haven’t even finished anything yet.  We literally have just ONE room done so far!  The fly shop.  Everything else is a work in progress.  We’re a long way from being finished,  but guess what!  We’re making progress.  30 years of the city and the Powells and the Mallotts being responsible for the hangar,  we’re fortunate to still have a building at all.  The state was working toward demolition,  for the obvious reasons I have tried to illustrate in the photos above.

I’m not perfect.  I’m learning as I go.  There are things I wish I had done differently and there are things I want to do,  but can’t afford to do.  I’m giving myself until May,  2016 to be done with the project.  That will be the 75th anniversary of the first plane landing at the Yakutat Airbase.  I want to have one hell of a celebratory year in 2016,  with an incredible building,  an incredible museum,  incredible shops and businesses,  incredible planes…

Stay tuned!

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