ocktails crafted with locally foraged plants. Premium indoor golf simulators. Riverside glamping. Luxury gyms with high-end classes. A resort with a private lake and shareable plates.
These are all examples of urban amenities that celebrate what’s great about Alaska—and they’re cropping up in the Mat-Su, not its more densely populated neighbor, Anchorage.
Behind those numbers is another reality: Anchorage is losing people mostly to the Mat-Su. In 2025, 69 percent of the new Mat-Su residents hailed from Anchorage. Fairbanks and Kenai area residents also moved to Southcentral’s second center, but in much smaller numbers: 6 and 7 percent, respectively.
Affordable and available housing is part of the reason. In 2025, more than half of the 2,100 homes built in Alaska went up in the Mat-Su. Anchorage saw only 16 percent of statewide new home construction.
Proximity to Anchorage facilitates that growth. Long called Anchorage’s bedroom community, 39 percent of the Mat-Su workforce works outside the borough. About 15 percent of those are employed on the North Slope, but 67 percent of working-age Mat-Su residents who commute are heading to jobs in Anchorage.
While working in Anchorage means Mat-Su residents can tap into higher-wage jobs (average wages for Anchorage are $74,280 versus Mat-Su’s average wage of $58,080), many commuters balk at making the trip when a paycheck isn’t at stake. For social or entertainment engagements in the off hours, businesses in Mat-Su are stepping up, providing higher-end recreational options.
Marissa Senna, operations manager for Meier Lake Resort, says she and partner Michael Maddux have worked to keep the summer camp/resort feel of the property intact while updating almost every aspect.
The cabins are original but have been completely gutted and renovated, she says. They were given new foundations and in-floor heating, and each cabin is decorated in mid-century modern style, with clean lines and natural colors. In keeping with the summer camp cabin tradition, the rooms don’t have restrooms, but there’s no schlepping along a muddy path to a community shower here; the nearby shower house has bathrooms assigned to each cabin. The showers were also renovated from top to bottom. Gone are the tiny tiles and plastic curtains. Instead, it sports spa-like showers, an enormous bridal suite, and upscale tile and wood throughout.
“This place is for making memories. Meier Lake has existed before we were ever here and will exist after we’re gone. We are just stewards, moving this property through the next phase of its life. We want all of our wedding couples to come back and celebrate anniversaries, family reunions, and all sorts of special events. The space itself is really for people to come together, have a drink, have s’mores over the campfire, and just really take the time and make those memories,” Senna says.
Senna says each year has brought change, such as opening the Alaskana Social Club, a craft cocktail bar and restaurant, in 2025. Where summer campers once slid trays to be served at the camp cafeteria, a bar now stands, reflecting the lake, with a glittering chandelier and array of fine liquors.
With a fully equipped kitchen, Senna says the restaurant is meant to be part homey neighborhood bar and part fine dining with shareable plates. That’s where the “Social Club” name comes in, she says. It even has a dress code: Clean Cut Alaskan. Don’t worry about your XtraTufs, she says, but no pajamas, please.
“We want this to be your neighborhood bar, as well as a special event space,” she says. “My favorite thing that I get to see if I’m standing behind the bar is to watch somebody finish their meal, get up, go to leave, and then immediately stop at a table two tables over because they know someone there. It’s the local community, all together. The ‘Social Club’ is really to emphasize the fact that this is for our community.”
The drink menu includes hand-crafted cocktails and mocktails, such as the Devil’s Club, made with devil’s club sustainably foraged on the property each spring; the leafy green is then infused into a cocktail reminiscent of the classic, bubbly French 75 cocktail.
The menu describes the dishes as “made to be passed around the table and enjoyed together.” Locally made potato chips, shareable plates of Alaska oysters, macaroni and cheese made with Alaska scallops, cider-marinated pork-belly skewers, and chicken and waffles evince the restaurant’s locally grown focus and the Midwestern roots of its chef, Matt Stohlgren, and the Southern roots of its sous-chef, Michael Ross.
Senna says the team uses Delta Junction-grown milk and beef, and they shop for the freshest local ingredients at farmers’ markets and at Bushes Bunches Produce Stand whenever possible.
Meier Lake Resort
Alopex | Arctic Fairways
Impakt Athletics
“We want to have a bar where you can come on in and treat it like your living room—but you don’t have to clean up after yourself, and the cocktails are a lot better,” Senna says with a laugh. The speakeasy might become a proper club with membership at some point—Senna says the team is still working out what the neighborhood would like to see.
On one side of the lodge is tranquil Meier Lake, completely encompassed in the resort property. On the other side, beyond the parking lot, is a hidden gem: a disc golf course designed by a world championship disc golfer, Senna says.
“It’s absolutely mesmerizing,” she says. People are welcome to stop by and play a round for $10 per person, she says. The lodge has a small disc golf pro shop as well.
“We just wanted to create something that we would want and see what our friends and neighbors want to enjoy, and that’s what we try to provide,” she says.
Using Full Swing, the same brand of golf simulator Tiger Woods practices on, Arctic Fairways has both open and private bays, each with more than sixteen feet of swinging room. Golfers can bring their own clubs and play a round on a Professional Golfers’ Association tour course or an iconic destination such as Pebble Beach Golf Links. Or they can rent clubs, take a lesson from a local golf pro, and grab a panini and a beer at the 20-foot quartz bar.
Hammer is a Colony High School grad who played baseball throughout his youth. After he began working, he realized he needed a sport and started playing golf. It was addicting, he says, but he could only play for a few months of the year.
“I never felt like I was getting better because I would play and by the end of the season, I’m getting good. And then I’d have to [give it up for the winter]. Springtime rolls around, and I’m like, ‘What is this thing in my hand?’ And I have to figure it out again,” he says.
Hammer works on the North Slope and says he always needs a project when he’s off rotation. He’s built a couple of houses—his own and his parents’—and with those skills he decided to venture into commercial construction. It’s more rigorous, he says, due to additional fire safety requirements, but bit by bit he and his parents put Arctic Fairways together.
The sleek, modern interior has 100-inch televisions hung high for easy visibility, wooden slat walls that Hammer says took a team of friends to raise, custom-built light fixtures, and other features that the Hammers hand-made and installed over a two-year construction period.
“I wanted it to be a place where people can come for date nights or come out with the kids,” he says. “I wanted people to be blown away when they walked in.”
If kids aren’t into golf, the simulators also offer hockey, soccer, football, basketball, baseball, zombie dodgeball, and other games. Hammer says he was aiming for a spot with a little something for everyone, even if that’s just hanging out on the couch and reading a book while friends play, or just stopping in for lunch.
With the Full Swing golfing system in place—installed and calibrated by a team from Full Swing, Hammer says—other parts fell into place. The business opened in March with the simulator, a slate of mocktails, and a menu of sandwiches, sliders, salads, and sides. After what Hammer jokes was a “quick seventeen months,” Arctic Fairways was granted a beer and wine license in June, expanding the menu further. Also, the pro shop stocks Travis Mathew apparel, hats, and custom-embroidered accessories.
Opening an indoor golf range in spring, when outdoor golf courses were readying their greens for summer, wasn’t ideal timing, but Hammer lucked out. A long, chilly spring and rainy summer has boosted traffic. In the fall, Hammer is adding a competitive league, a recreation league, and maybe more.
“We’re still in the creation phase of it,” Hammer says.
“We were in there for a long time, and we had people coming from all over the state,” she says.
Then a friend, who happens to be a real estate broker, mentioned that a building near the Lowe’s hardware store in Wasilla was coming up for lease. It’s just off the Parks Highway, but not as visible as highway frontage. The structure was unfinished but spacious enough for fifteen planned offices. “It was just the four walls; the floor hadn’t even been laid yet,” Wohlers recalls. She and Ryan Childers got to design a gym from the ground up.
Now Wohlers and Childers run the Impakt Athletics 24-hour luxury fitness facility and the adjacent Impakt Youth Athletics. They plan to expand to Eagle River in 2027.
What makes it a luxury? Locker rooms with high-end finishes, very large showers, a sauna, a cold plunge tub, a nail technician on one side and a massage therapist on the other, Wohlers says. The equipment isn’t standard gym gear; the team invested in Rogue Fitness, supplier for the CrossFit Games and USA Weightlifting. Wohlers is especially proud that most of Impakt’s instructors have degrees and advanced certifications in the field.
The youth facility opened after the adult facility was up and running. “Ryan and I had coached a lot of youth—and by default, worked with a lot of adults—through gymnastics. We believe it’s good to be active, good to be fit,” Wohlers says. But they also felt parents should lead by example, so they wanted a place where parents could get comfortable with their own fitness strategy, learning foundational skills.
“Getting there [to the gym] is the easy part. Walking through the door without a plan is incredibly intimidating. Our goal was to provide a space for adults that really only is available for youth,” Wohlers says.
The gym offers workout menus on iPads for members to customize. Small group classes are available, along with team sports and one-on-one training. In the center of the cardio area, local trainer McKenzie Zipperian leads a spin studio.
“Spin, as a whole, can be less intimidating than a group fitness class. You’re going to sit on a bike, turn off the lights, and just spin,” Wohlers says. “The combination of fitness and spin doesn’t need to be in separate spaces, so we dropped his entire studio into the cardio area and decked it out with neon lights.”
Wohlers says the Impakt team plans to continue to improve its Wasilla offerings in response to what its members want, and they have a ten-year strategy to spread personalized fitness throughout the state. The current plan is to open a new location every two to three years: after Eagle River would come Anchorage and Kenai. But the Mat-Su gets the first crack.
Rachel Struve Photography | Lulu’s Tents and Events
Laura Wilson, an Alaskan transplant from New Hampshire, was working in the events industry when the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down. With no events to coordinate, Wilson was out of a job.
An acquaintance who was a wedding officiant reached out, saying she planned to retire. She asked Wilson to try performing nuptial duties. Wilson says she didn’t think it would be a good fit—she’s a sure “cry” at weddings, so she was uncertain she wanted to do that daily. Then someone else reached out with the same suggestion. Wilson gave in, and after one wedding she loved the job. “Why did I wait until I was in my 50s to discover this?” she asked herself. Thus, Wilson started Say Yes Alaska, a wedding planning company.
Around that time, Wilson noticed a “for sale” sign at a wooded property between Old Glenn Highway and the Knik River. It felt like home, like the place she belonged.
Wilson sold her New Hampshire home and purchased the Knik River lot. Around that time, a friend sent her a link to Vermont-based Stout Tent, maker of bell-style tents, which are noted for their ability to stand up in the wind. Living in the Knik River valley, Wilson knows all about the wind whooshing down from Knik Glacier.
Those elements came together as Lulu’s Tents and Events. Wilson ordered nine tents—she has a thing for odd numbers, she says—and bought comfy queen-sized beds, rugs, lamps, chairs, soft bedding, and cozy details. Lulu’s Tents and Events, open from Memorial Day to Labor Day, became the Mat-Su’s first glamping spot.
Impakt Athletics
Alopex | Arctic Fairways
The mix of campers she sees is fun and eclectic, she says. “I get people in their early 20s, I get couples, I get friend groups, I get people who live five minutes down the road who are like, ‘We don’t want to be far away from our kids, but we don’t want to be with our kids for the night,’” she says. “Then I’ll get people in their 80s, taking the trip of a lifetime.”
So far this year, she’s welcomed people from twenty-two different countries. “They’re all around the campfire, all different people from all different walks of life. Nobody knows each other, but they’re all friends,” Wilson says.
Lulu’s Tents and Events is about more than luxury camping. A lover of live music, Wilson organized “Campfire Sessions” each Wednesday featuring artists traveling in Alaska. For instance, Hope Cassity and Jerry Wessling both had dates on the 2026 summer calendar. In July, Wilson hosted a four-musician “Songwriters on the River” event in which the musicians explained their songwriting process in addition to playing music. She also held a Wellness Weekend in late July with Active Mountain Yoga in which participants hiked, painted, took part in yoga sessions, journaled, and recharged.
Running a business shaped by uncontrollable factors like wind and rain is a little tricky, Wilson says. But one constant has been the community. People enjoy her location, she says, and some return every year. Others have supplied her with wood for campfires or propane for the shared kitchen. “I always say I’m the face of it, but behind the scenes, there’s hundreds of people,” Wilson says.
Whether it’s year-round professional golf or cocktails made with locally foraged plants, personalized fitness or riverside yoga, small business owners in the Mat-Su are working to keep up with the bedroom community’s evolving tastes.