Among the highlights of the company's newest office building, JL Tower, is the addition of LED lighting that will brighten the skies of Midtown.

The 14-story office building will feature 300,000 square feet of office space. At the top, a penthouse will hold the mechanical systems. But surrounding that, for the equivalent of four stories, the building will feature a sort of grill system. Lights will point upward, brightening the sky, similar to that of the Empire State Building.

“They could put on a light show if they wanted,” said Larry Cash, principal at RIM Architects, which led the design team.

The building should be completed in summer 2008, and should be lit up starting this winter, assuming there are no issues with city codes.

The tower is owned by JL Properties, the Alaska Native regional corporation Chugach Alaska and Reef Alaska Tower, which is an affiliate of Washington Capital Management. Chugach Alaska will move its headquarters to the building, taking up five floors.

The cost is more than $60 million, though the developer wouldn't give specific figures. The tower is being built 100 percent with union workers, part of an agreement with Washington Capital, which manages union pension funds.

JL Tower is the third installment of the city's newfound business district in Midtown. JL Properties also owns and manages the ASRC building, which houses the Arctic Slope Regional Corp. offices, as well as nearby Centerpoint.

JL also has tentative plans for two other office buildings in the area, one possibly rising to 18 floors. Plans may include a parking structure later.

“It's quite a transformation JL has created with that 36 acres of land, and it's a prime location in Midtown,” Cash said. A mobile home park used to sit on the land.

The developers saw a market opportunity and jumped on it, said Leonard Hyde, co-owner of JL Properties. Downtown development is more difficult, space is tight and parking structures typically have to be part of any new high-rise building.

Work on fourth tower will depend largely on how quick the third building is filled up, Hyde said. Preliminary designs are already underway.

“We'd like to start the next building next summer, we're in the position to do it,” he said.

Materials prices and labor costs have increased greatly in recent years. Kyle Randich, president of general contractor Davis Constructors, said the JL Tower will cost 40 percent more than the similarly sized ASRC building, completed in 2001.

It will be the first privately owned LEED-certified facility in the state. LEED is a nationally recognized process that shows a building has certain environmental standards.

Getting LEED certifications cost more up front; increases are generally 2 percent to 5 percent. But the efforts pay off in the long run, with savings in heating and lighting, in addition to the positive viewpoints of employing environmentally sound practices, Hyde said.

“We think it's the right thing to do,” Hyde said. “I think it will also help with certain companies that want to relocate. They want to be in an environmentally friendly building.”

Once the duct work is installed, it is sealed until the messy, dusty work is completed, an unusual step in the process, Randich said.

When possible, all materials used in the building were made with recycled materials. The wood is certified that it was not taken from old-growth forests.

Also part of the certification process, construction crews recycle everything possible, including the metal, wood, gypsum board, concrete and plastic. Waste materials are sorted into separate bins and hauled to various recycling facilities in town.

The building got extra points for the exercise room — a way to keep tenants healthy.

The tower will have 267,000 square feet of rentable space. Each floor will offer 20,000 feet.

“JL's charge was for this to be a distinctive Class A-plus office facility that would meet the criteria for office buildings anywhere in the country, and to attract major national and international tenants that do business in Alaska as well as accommodate local businesses that have a need for offices,” Cash said.

The second floor will feature a fully wired conference center, as well as an exercise center, complete with showers. The limestone outlay was imported from Lisbon, Portugal. The structural steel came from Korea.

Several sculptures will finish the outside look.