Anchorage’s largest homeless shelter will have a new operator starting Wednesday, but city officials say there will be no disruption of services for the 400 people who stay there each night.
99 Plus 1, a private company, was awarded the contract to operate the Sullivan Arena shelter for the next six months, Mayor Dave Bronson’s administration announced on Sunday. The company will take over the job from Bean’s Cafe, a nonprofit and longtime operator of Anchorage’s largest soup kitchen.
99 Plus 1 previously provided transportation for guests at the Sullivan shelter. The company was formed last September, according to state records.
The city’s purchasing department released a document in August seeking an operator for the shelter. It said the requirements included at least three years of experience providing homeless services.
Corey Allen Young, a spokesperson for Bronson, wrote in an email that “the contractor must have staff with this experience but they do not need to have gained it working for this contractor.”
Bean’s Cafe had operated the mass care shelter at the Sulivan since it was set up in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic. That contract was set to expire on Sept. 15.
The new contract with 99 Plus 1 will run until March 31, 2022, with the option for six one-month extensions.
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Lisa Sauder, Bean’s Cafe executive director, said she was proud of the work the Bean’s had done over the past year and a half in setting up the shelter. She said that Bean’s would continue to serve Anchorage however it could.
Meanwhile, city officials are hoping to move people out of the Sullivan Arena as soon as possible.
A group of Anchorage Assembly members and representatives from Bronson’s administration are trying to narrow down new shelter options.
But those talks reached a tense point last week following a barbed Twitter post from the mayor after the group said it was unlikely that they’d find an alternative shelter site before spring.
In a Twitter post, Bronson asked residents to contact Assembly members and “let them know you expect them to accelerate their efforts.”
After the mayor’s tweet, Downtown Assemblyman Chris Constant spoke to reporters outside City Hall on Friday, and he questioned whether the mayor’s team was working in good faith.
“Up until the mayor’s little Tweet — which he just couldn’t help himself — I thought we had a really great working relationship established between him, his team, and us, this delegation working on behalf of the Assembly,” said Constant. “At this point, there’s a lot of questions.”
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