After sitting mostly empty for more than two years, Juneau’s Marie Drake building will soon see new life.
The former school building – which housed Juneau School District’s Montessori and alternative high school programs – closed down after the Juneau School District consolidated schools in 2024. The city took over ownership of the downtown building that summer. Since then, the Marie Drake building has sat mostly empty, except for its planetarium and gymnasium.
Now, the city is preparing to move its Parks and Recreation facilities maintenance division into the building, from its current location at the Mount Jumbo gym on Douglas Island. Nate Abbott is CBJ’s facilities maintenance superintendent. He said it’s an exciting time for his division.
“It’s going to be a lot more efficient, and then it’s going to have us closer to all the other city departments as well, and so that’ll be beneficial for us,” Abbott said.
The move is slated to take place in October. It comes after the Juneau Assembly voted to close and sell the Mount Jumbo facility to help solve a multi-million dollar revenue shortfall.
The Juneau Assembly briefly considered Marie Drake for Juneau’s new City Hall location, but due to high repair costs and a lack of parking, that plan didn’t go far. The Assembly also considered a plan to partially demolish the building last year, but that came with a multimillion-dollar price tag. The Assembly instead voted to move City Hall employees to the building that houses the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation.
According to Abbott, the budget for the Parks and Recreation facilities maintenance division’s move is $150,000. It will fund moving equipment and 13 staff members’ workspaces from Douglas to downtown, and converting some of the space outside into a large gravel parking area for city employees.
Inside the building, Abbott said they plan to retrofit classrooms into offices and the cafeteria into a large shop space. He said besides moving the equipment inside, the actual building layout won’t change all that much to avoid the risk of potentially disturbing asbestos.
“Once you want to start doing anything, it becomes a problem, which is one of the reasons why City Hall and moving offices here didn’t end up working out,” he said. “Because once you start looking at like, ‘We want to build a wall or take down a wall or we want to add more networking,’ you just start to get into asbestos and the cost skyrockets.”
The school’s beloved planetarium won’t be affected. But the school’s gymnasium will soon see more activity, said Lauren Verrelli, the deputy director of the Parks and Rec department.
Verrelli said the Marie Drake building will take over programs previously offered at Mount Jumbo gym, like pickleball and preschool open gym. She said the department also hopes to offer more programs there in the future.
“This space is a good space, and I think it’ll serve our user groups well, our public well. It’s more centrally located, more dedicated parking,” Verrelli said.
The gym is slated to open with its new programs after Labor Day weekend.
This story has been updated to clarify Nate Abbott’s title with the city.
