Mountain View in Motion

What is an arts & cultural district?

Why in Mountain View?

How long will it take?

Who is involved?

What can I do?

Master Plan
Overview Booklet
General Brochure

(510 kb)

	Mountain View in the Sun: A festival of Art and Culture 7/12/05
	ADN: Bright New View 7/27/03
	Press: Don't Worry, Be Arty 8/7/03

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A Neighborhood in Motion is one in which public and private entities work in partnership to create positive, sustainable economic growth.

The intent is not to replace existing commercial, residential, and human infrastructure (as is often the case in the gentrification of blighted urban areas), but to improve and complement the neighborhood using local, state, and national resources.

Mountain View: A Neighborhood Profile, conducted in 2003 by Davis Consulting, suggests that Mountain View is at risk of continuing to languish as a distressed neighborhood, characterized by low levels of home ownership, high levels of unemployment, a weak economic base, a transient population, and high crime rates.

Mountain View residents have a long history of neighborhood activism.
A Community Council meeting, 1953

Mountain View is poised for a rebirth. Its residents are motivated, its community council is one of Anchorage’s most active, government officials are becoming involved, and some significant trends have already begun reversing themselves, most notably crime rates.

By any measure, Mountain View is already a Neighborhood in Motion.

MOUNTAIN VIEW: A NEIGHBORHOOD PROFILE*

INCOME

20% of Mountain View households are making less than $15,000 a year (full-time minimum wage), compared with 8% citywide
40% of Mountain View households made less than half of Anchorage’s median household income in 2000
25% of population lives below the poverty level, compared with 12% nationally and 7% for Anchorage
32% of single-mother families live below the poverty level, compared to 12% married-couple families and 9% single-father families

EMPLOYMENT

10% are unemployed (2002), compared with 5% citywide, and 6% nationally
30% unemployment among Native and Asian populations

  *Source: Mountain View: A
   Neighborhood Profile, Davis
   Consulting, 2003

Anchorage Neighborhood Housing Services, Inc. (ANHS) has launched the Mountain View in Motion project to facilitate the revitalization needed to reverse these trends, and turn Mountain View into a “neighborhood of choice.”

The revitalization effort includes, as a key component, the creation of an Arts & Cultural District along Mountain View Drive. The concept is modeled after the successful creation of such districts in other states. An arts and cultural focus is applied to neighborhood revitalization by enticing arts and cultural organizations to relocate to a targeted area. This in turn fosters retail business growth and the renovation of blighted real estate properties, and improvement of the area’s economic and tax bases.

A public/private partnership, the Mountain View in Motion project will attempt to harness the cultural synergy of Anchorage’s most diverse neighborhood: over 45 distinct nationalities are represented in the area’s elementary schools, and 17% of the neighborhood’s population is Native Alaskan or American Indian, 12% is Black, 11% is Asian, and 10% is Hispanic.

CHILDREN

43% of children 12 to 17 years, 34% of children 6 to 11 years, and 27% of children under 5 years old live below the poverty level
89% of students at Mountain View Elementary School and 86% at William Tyson Elementary School are minorities, compared with 42% of elementary students in the Anchorage School District
93% of Mountain View Elementary School students and 88% of Tyson Elementary School students qualify for the free/reduced lunch program

TRANSPORTATION

10% of Mountain View residents take the bus to work – five times Anchorage's citywide average
22% of households are with-out a vehicle, compared with 8% citywide

HOUSING

78% of housing stock in Mountain View is multi-family housing, compared with 37% in Anchorage and 26% nationally