Those were some of the messages heard by members of the Anchorage Board of Realtors and the local chapter of IREM, the Institute of Real Estate Marketing, at their annual market forecast luncheon Dec. 14 at the Millennium Hotel in Anchorage.

Some well-known national retailers are sizing up the commercial real estate market here, looking for new locations, said Bill Gee, vice president and broker with Hickel Investment Company.

"We've got a lot of restaurants coming in. TGIF just opened, Hot Licks is opening up, Krispy Kreme is looking around," Gee said. "Starbucks is looking for five new locations. We've got two new Church's Chicken stores and several more national (chains) who don't want their names mentioned yet."

"We have eight million square feet of commercial office space currently in Anchorage, with a 5 percent vacancy factor," he said. "Compared to many markets in the Lower 48, we're doing pretty good because a lot of them have double-digit vacancy factors."

Most of the demand for office space in Anchorage is in the health care, financial and real estate industries, he said.

With all the current construction there will soon be an additional 455,000 square feet of office space that will be looking for occupants, Gee stated.

"The only question we have is 'can the economy support that much activity?'" Gee said. He predicted a steady growth rate for office space demand of about 2 percent per year in the near future.

"We won't be having it fill up right away, but ... it should be a good market," he said.

The retail sector has been moving along at a snail's pace, Gee said, but recently has been picking up speed.

"Some of them ran out of gas," he said, mentioning recent closures of stores including local K-Marts, the Disney Store, and the Burger King chain in Alaska.

"The plus side is, most of the problems with these closures have not been in Anchorage, but on a national scale," he said. "So it doesn't really reflect what we've been doing here."

Other national and local firms are helping to accelerate the retail market with new or expanded stores.

Gee mentioned a new Sportsman's Warehouse outlet, the remodeling of Fred Meyer stores, the new Abercrombie and Fitch store downtown, an expansion of Animal Food Warehouse, and a relocation of Hewitt's Drugs to the old McKay Hardware building on Fireweed Lane.

Home sweet condo

There is a growing feeling of urgency in the new home construction market, Robin Ward, owner of Real Estate Unlimited, told the crowd.

Land is scarce and interest rates are low, she said. "We still have a tremendous amount of buyers coming out of rentals into their first homes, and that creates a great 'move up' market."

Ward said the number of new housing units being built in 2004 will be about the same as last year, with a trend toward continued construction of what are called "site condos."

Ward said builders prefer to call them "planned communities" and builders may soon be seeing some new code requirements.

The method of construction - condensed housing on small lots with narrow streets - has stirred some controversy. Cases have been reported where fire trucks do not have sufficient room to maneuver in the neighborhoods.

"There are some new regulations on the way," she said.

She said most new home buyers want single-family homes on good-sized lots, but the market cannot handle the demand.

"We have a tremendous shortage of single-family lots," Ward said. "So their next choice will be a planned community, townhouse duplex style."

But even those are getting scarce, she said, and the next trend will be toward single apartment-style condos for first-time homebuyers.

Mark Korting, a broker/owner with RE/MAX properties in Anchorage, covered the market for existing home sales.

He said he expected interest rates to hold near their current historically low levels in 2004.

"I don't see them going up a lot," Korting said. "There has been a lot of uncertainty in the national economy, but there is plenty of money out there so rates will remain fairly low."

He said trends indicate the population of Anchorage and number of new jobs in the city will continue to increase, and that will keep existing housing sales moving at a good clip.

Korting said he was wrong in his prediction last year that housing unit sales would be flat or go down in 2003. "It was actually up, about 10 or 12 percent," he said. "So we really did quite a lot more business in 2003 than in 2002."

For 2004, he predicted a continuing upward trend of about 10 percent, which translates to approximately 5,000 homes being sold.

Home prices went up about 6 percent last year, he said, and will go up another 6 or 7 percent this year.

Busy and cold

A good example of the bustling new housing market can be found at the far east end of Dowling Road in Anchorage.

Work crews were out working briskly on a bitterly cold winter mid-January day when the Journal paid a visit to a development in the Simonian Subdivision, where 90 new three- and four-bedroom duplexes are under construction.

KND Investments Ltd. is planning a total of 180 units in the subdivision, a job foreman said.

And it is not pleasant work.

Ivan Kojin, the "lead man" on two of the new units, said frigid temperatures this month have caused tools to break and air pressure lines to freeze up.

"It's pretty tough," Kojin said, while preparing to do some roofing work.

He said he and his brother Peter and co-worker Justin Walker put in 12-hour shifts, six days a week.

"We've been out here all winter," he said. "It's hard work, but it keeps us busy."