en short years ago, H5 Construction performed routine property maintenance with one employee. Now the company is looking at about $75 million in work—a list that includes the Home2 Suites by Hilton in Wasilla, more than one affordable housing development project, a new custom-designed veterinary urgent care facility, and a major renovation to the Alaska Addiction Rehabilitation Services alcohol treatment facility at Nugen’s Ranch that will double its client capacity from twenty-six beds to fifty-two—and that’s just the projects happening in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

Cameron Johnson and Daniel and Jerad Hacker, the brothers who run H5, are three of the five Hackers for whom H5 is named; their parents, Jim and Lisa Hacker, are the other two. While it’s fair to say the company has come a long way in one decade, the brothers will attest that each step has been on the greater path of building a company they see as their dad’s legacy.

The Hacker family moved to Alaska in 1983, looking for a fresh start. Jim and Lisa’s three sons grew up in the Mat-Su, learning lessons about fixing things, promoting a business, and living with integrity. Jim was a journeyman plumber, a licensed electrician, and a jack of all trades.

“My dad was able to go from a guy who didn’t graduate high school to being a very successful business owner and contractor in the state,” Cameron says.

When the family started H5 Construction and began doing construction work—small office renovations and the like—they learned that each brought different skills to the table. Cameron is a skilled property developer, while Daniel and Jerad bring strong management and construction expertise. Their dad added a vast depth of knowledge—ranging from estimating and supervision to project management.

“As a journeyman plumber with hands-on experience across multiple trades, he had just about every skill you could think of, and together the family has always leaned on one another’s strengths,” Daniel says.

“That’s really what’s helped us, as a company. We’re family owned and ran, and we just work well off each other,” Cameron notes.

Jerad adds, “There’s just no egos involved; nobody’s really looking for the credit. Everybody is trying to hit a certain goal and whatever it takes to get there, it doesn’t matter who’s responsible for it at the end of the day. We know where we want to get to and we all just put our heads down and go to work.”

The company worked on smaller jobs for a couple years, and the big break arrived in 2017 when local affordable housing nonprofit Valley Residential Services (VRS) needed a contractor to take over a senior housing project in Wasilla that was already underway. H5 finished building the seventy-eight-unit Vista Rose Senior Apartment complex.

“That kind of just kick-started us, as a company,” Cameron says.

Since then, H5 and VRS have been a team. Cameron is affiliated with The Pacific Companies, an affordable housing development firm that builds throughout the western United States. H5 builds the developments, with partner financing through Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, and VRS is the property manager.

“They’re my partner in 75 percent of the affordable housing projects we’ve done up here,” Cameron says. “We have a really good working relationship with VRS. We’re working together to help solve the affordable housing crisis that’s happening here in the Valley and in the state as a whole.”

Jerad estimates that H5 has built about 700 affordable housing units in Southcentral—about 100 of those in Anchorage, he notes. In town, H5 is working with Cook Inlet Housing Authority on numerous projects. Currently under construction is phase 1 of the twenty-four-unit Baxter Family Housing project, which consists of two nine-plex buildings and a six-plex. Initially scheduled for construction next year, a decision by the Anchorage Assembly to lift certain design rules for multi-family housing projects allowed work to begin earlier than expected.

Affordable housing isn’t the only kind of housing H5 knows how to build, however. The company also recently completed construction of Bella Terra Luxury Apartments, a thirty-two-unit gated complex on east Fourth Avenue in the Muldoon neighborhood.

With Cameron working on finance and his brothers handling construction, residential projects are a big part of H5’s future—some are even planned at H5’s showpiece project, The Shoppes at Sun Mountain.

“We’re not just a general contractor; we’re a development company. So, through that development, we create opportunities for the contracting arm as well,” Cameron says, noting that about 70 percent of the projects H5 has been involved in have started as development projects H5 created.

One project that has exemplified H5’s growth has been The Shoppes at Sun Mountain, a 32-acre shopping center overlooking Cottonwood Creek in Wasilla. Since it opened in 2019, the power center has become home to Alaska’s first Sonic Drive-In, as well as a Fred Meyer gas station, Planet Fitness, Tacos Cancun Mexican Grill, Krispy Kreme, MTA and, most recently, House of Fire Pizza. Development is only getting started, however; H5 crews are working to build a 107-room Home2 Suites by Hilton, which should be open by fall 2026. Also in store for the property is a 31-unit senior apartment project, Cameron says.

He envisions the kind of shopping complex one might find Outside, with various national chains anchoring the site. When he started working on the project in 2019, “we had all these big plans.” He had a five-year goal to develop the property. Several national retailers were ready to jump on board. But then COVID-19 happened, and many national retailers paused expansion plans until the future was clearer.

“We’re now into year six, and we’re not even halfway done,” Cameron says.

He gave credit to his brothers, who sourced other development and construction opportunities to help the company through. Now development is going strong again, with a new retail building that opened this summer—House of Fire Pizza is an anchor tenant—and ground broken on the hotel in July.

“The Sun Mountain project is a staple in the community. As far as total scope, it’s one of the biggest projects to hit Wasilla in a few decades,” Jerad notes.

Lest one think H5 is just about developing new projects, renovations on the shore of Lake Lucille show how that’s not the case. In 2023, H5 renovated the Mat-Su’s only existing national hotel chain, the Best Western Lake Lucille Inn, and gave it a new restaurant, Chop House at Lake Lucille. Cameron says it’s one of his favorite of all H5’s projects because it had been a treasured dining spot before it closed in the late 2000s.

“It’s such an incredible space that was being underutilized,” he says. “What we were able to do there was pretty special.”

Cameron is also an owner of Settler’s Bay Lodge in Knik, and H5 is now working to transform another iconic Wasilla spot: the former Wasilla Bar, which closed in 2004 and transitioned to a Salvation Army thrift store but recently shut down. Daniel says that’s one of his favorite projects; the bar and its saloon-style exterior was classic Wasilla. Having the opportunity to revamp the building and bring it up to date is meaningful. “It’s one of the first things you see as you drive into town, so to have an opportunity to be a part of that was pretty big,” he says.

Jerad notes that the former bar will be split into two units. One side will house a Great Harvest Bread Company franchise, known for whole grain breads made from Montana wheat. That store is expected to open in November, he says.

Jerad says he’s excited about moving more into medical construction. H5 recently completed the Susitna Animal Urgent Care clinic off Trunk Road and is now working on a dentist’s office, with another health clinic project on deck.

Development and construction means having a hand in shaping the community, he says. “A lot of our drive is just providing jobs and bringing new services to the Valley—and housing,” Jerad says. “We can see the differences it makes out in the community. We’ve seen that from the beginning with the lives it’s changed.”

H5 has been working to make a difference in a different way as well.

Jim retired a few years ago from the company he started, but a year into his retirement he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. It’s a progressive nervous system disease that causes muscle weakness, loss of movement, and eventually death. For people whose homes are not wheelchair accessible, living with the diagnosis can be distressing and even dangerous.

Jim died of ALS in 2023. “It was one of my dad’s dying wishes to help those that were less fortunate and couldn’t find those [support] services,” Cameron says.

“In his honor, we created a nonprofit, Jimbo’s Wish, that does home modifications to make the quality of life better for those diagnosed with ALS here in Alaska,” Daniel adds. “There’s a lot of homes here that are just worst-case scenario: tri-levels or split levels that, you know, you reach a point that you just can’t get up the stairs. There needs to be chair lifts or elevators or those types of things.”

For the past two years, the family has held a golf scramble on their dad’s birthday weekend to raise money for Jimbo’s Wish. The event helps provide materials for needed renovations, and H5 volunteers their time to complete the work.

H5 has had a steady growth trajectory over the past ten years, the Hackers say. Revenue has grown—often even doubling—in many of those years, Jerad says. The employee count has gone from one to forty-three. Part of the team’s passion is not just to grow the company but to make more opportunities for the people within it, Daniel says.

“If you only have three projects, you only have three superintendents. There’s people who are trying to get to the next level. If you don’t open up opportunities and take on more projects and allow people to step into those roles, they’re going to go somewhere else,” he explains. “So what we want to do is to create opportunities and create benefits.”

He notes that H5 was able to offer its employees a 75 percent employer-paid healthcare plan this year, in addition to a retirement plan and other benefits.

Just as important, the number of people involved in H5 contracts has gone up significantly as well. Jerad notes that H5’s growth plateaued at one point because it was difficult to find enough people to get the work done.

“For the first seven or eight years, we framed everything… and we couldn’t find any subcontractors to take that portion of work on. It kind of held up our growth a little bit,” Jerad says. “When you’re growing as fast as we are, if you only have one electrician, you’re not going to get very far.”

But the company has worked hard to expand its subcontractor base and has turned those into good relationships. “And, quite honestly, a lot of these subs are growing with us,” Jerad notes. “They went from, you know, little mom and pop shops to now they have fifteen or twenty employees.”

There’s also the reputation the company has worked hard to build. Cameron notes that their father was emphatic that working with integrity, being dependable and reliable, and turning out quality work was the way to succeed in business—and in life. H5 has followed that standard, Cameron says, and it’s paying off.

“We’re not chasing work; people are calling us because they know what they’re going to get: they’re going to get an honest experience with a reliable and trustworthy contractor. That’s really what we’ve built our brand on,” Cameron says. “We’re not trying to get rich off one project. It’s developing relationships, working with integrity and, through that, we’ve created, I think, a very positive identity here in the Valley as people you can trust.”