Living on the Road

Bespoke Boats

Anchorage airstrips tie the city to the sky

A journey through the supply chain

Nearly a year ago, our Best of Alaska Business (BOAB) section highlighted Arctic On-Demand, an aviation logistics solutions provider, as the best new company started in 2020. Arctic On-Demand flared brightly and is already gone, shut down last November—for a happy reason. In between BOAB voting and the July issue, Arctic On-Demand founder Rebecca Clark (left) veered into a new start-up, her second in as many years, with her friend and hangar-mate Jody Oyen (right). They created Remora, a computer app that puts excess aircraft capacity to use, pairing freight or passengers with available space. Think of it as ridesharing in the air. Remora has already attracted the attention of Launch Alaska, a nonprofit that accelerates small firms that have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The bonus for the climate is just one of the benefits that Remora’s approach to optimizing air logistics might have, in addition to supplying carriers with more paying customers and reducing costs for residents in aviation-dependent communities.

ver the last fifty years, Alaska Native corporations (ANCs) have become a vital part of the state’s economy. They represent a variety of industries, including construction, environmental services, government contracting, natural resource development, technology services, and real estate. They also play a major role in tourism.

Like many economic sectors, the COVID-19 pandemic slammed the Alaska tourism industry. The last couple of seasons interrupted an emerging new direction involving cultural tourism.

iability insurance is like a blanket that keeps out the chilly drafts of lawsuits for bodily injury or property damage. The types of claims are changing in the days of COVID-19, leading to a growing demand for liability insurance, which leads in turn to rising rates and policies with fewer bells and whistles. The elevated costs and more restrictive coverages in Alaska indicate a hardening market, according to experts. However, Alaska businesses can implement strategies to better position themselves to navigate the evolving landscape of liability issues.

he Alaska Army National Guard is giving away property. Dozens of buildings across the state are no longer needed. The divestiture program began in 2013 with a building given to Shaktoolik Native Corporation, and in 2021 more sites were handed over to communities than in any single year.

A change in Department of Defense (DOD) mission requirements in 2011 meant much of the National Guard’s property was no longer necessary. Among these facilities were the Federal Scout Readiness Centers, which were put in place during the Cold War as part of early warning measures and strategic defense. In many ways, leaders at the time viewed Alaska as a “tripwire” for any Soviet aggression in the Arctic that directly threatened North America.

s we move into a new phase of pandemic-induced life, I am reflecting on where we have been—from life quakes to the Great Resignation—and considering what comes next for our workplaces.

“Life quakes” is what we called the personal experiences we saw all around us in the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic. Isolation, despair, divorce, job loss, the childcare crisis, isolation of the elderly—this list is inadequate in naming the cracks and chasms that appeared over the last two years. We watched as this slow-motion disaster ripped through our lives at breathtaking speed, rendering time almost irrelevant and eliminating the boundaries between our personal lives and our daily workplace experiences.

ellow stripes on former Shell gas stations in Anchorage gave way in 2022 to a new color scheme: the gray and orange logo of Vitus Energy. The name evokes the sea: not just Vitus Bering, the Danish navigator who put Alaska on European maps in 1741, but Vitus Energy, the company formed in 2009 to transport fuel to Western Alaska villages by barge.

Yet here is Vitus Energy at Tudor Road and Arctic Boulevard, as of January, and then at Northern Lights Boulevard and Minnesota Drive in March—far from shore. Though the company is a newcomer to Anchorage drivers gassing up their cars and trucks, Vitus Energy is no stranger to retail fuel after steadily growing through a decade of wholesaling.

emoras are small fish that cling to larger animals for a free ride. Their name comes from a Latin word meaning “to hinder or delay,” but the Alaskans who’ve taken the fish as their mascot are doing exactly the opposite. They’ve started a company to streamline cargo shipments.

With backgrounds in aviation and logistics, co-founders Rebecca Clark and Jody Oyen created Remora to pair cargo or passengers with the most appropriate carrier.

“Jody and I started Remora while I was the managing director of Arctic On-Demand [AOD] because we saw a market that the company was missing and also the need for a simplified tool,” Clark explains. The centerpiece of Remora is an app that helps clients schedule cargo and passenger flights on planes that have available space.

ere I sit on my shelf. I’m cold, as I should be. My contents are pasteurized, but I contain no preservatives, so my creator recommends that I be refrigerated.

I am a 12-ounce can of ginger beer. Non-alcoholic, despite the name. A baby could drink me, except that my flavor is, well, challenging.

“I get that a lot,” says my creator, Mike Jipping. People ask him, ‘Why would you do something so niche?’ He answers, “I’m first to admit that I have a crazy streak in me.”

fter two not-so-great travel years as the result of a worldwide pandemic, people are ready to hit the highway—and some of them plan to do it in style. Traveling by RV (recreational vehicles, whether called motorhomes, campers, or caravans) is quickly growing in popularity, and for many people, it’s the perfect way to visit Alaska’s road-accessible attractions.

“RVing is a great way to get out and enjoy Alaska; it’s nice because you don’t have to be on a schedule, and you can quickly change plans if the weather isn’t cooperating,” says Shanna Johnson of Safe RV Travels in south Anchorage. “Not to mention that you don’t have to worry about sleeping in a tent in bear country.”

oats are holes in the water that owners throw money into, the saying goes. That money pays not just for operating a vessel but for customizing it. When a stock model can’t get the job done, it’s time to call on the skills of a naval architect.

Boat customization isn’t a process to jump into lightly. Time and money are both major investments in a start-to-finish project. Any naval architect will happily work with a client to design and bid out a custom vessel; a really good one will tell you when customization isn’t absolutely necessary.

The retail chain serving Alaska’s smaller towns is expanding, though exactly where is not yet clear. Three Bears Alaska announced more new stores in the next three years, thanks to a recapitalization deal with Seattle-based Westward Partners. Three Bears, originally based in Tok, operates nine stores in Alaska—from Ninilchik to Healy—and one in Butte, Montana.
threebearsalaska.com

More housing returns to Anchorage’s original townsite with the construction of a five-floor apartment building in the heart of downtown. A groundbreaking ceremony in March marked the start of construction on the Block 96 Flats project at 8th Avenue and K Street. The Anchorage Community Development Authority (ACDA) owns the land and formed a partnership with Debenham Properties, which is building the 48-unit apartment complex. That section of downtown, just north of the Delaney Park Strip, has not had any new market-rate (that is, non-subsidized) housing since the ‘80s. Block 96 Flats has a price tag of $11.6 million.
acda.net/projects

banker must be careful where she invests her own money to avoid competing with her customers. Therefore, Betsy Lawer put her wealth in Napa Valley grapes. Her two vineyards in Calistoga, California, operate in her absence most of the year, though. Her annual vacation time is capped at six weeks. She should talk to her boss about that.

Lawer has to “walk the walk,” she says. As a member of the Cuddy family, she followed her father and brother as President of First National Bank Alaska in 2013. She also followed her mother and grandmother into the Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame.