Reading this morning’s paper, I was struck by the news of the divesting of the Carrs stores once owned by Alaskans. https://adn-ak.newsmemory.com/?publink=063d827a6_134ad22

Looking back, when Bristol Bay Native Corporation bought two of the lower 48 seafood processor ships, I was thrilled to see the new Alaska ownership. When BP sold its assets to a pass-through (pays no Corp taxes) private Texas entity, I was disappointed that the Alaskan firms and ANCs that actually run the operations didn’t buy them.

In both cases, the impact on the employment and profits/benefits to Alaska were dramatically altered by whether or not we would invest in the assets critical to our state’s economy and healthy communities.

Which represents the path ahead for Alaska? Are we for sale to the highest bidder who can extract money from Alaska, or are we able and wiling to step up and take some control of our essential industries and necessary services and strengthen our own economic base?

For most of Alaska’s history rural food stores have been controlled by foreign ownership, while the road system was served by a local grocer for decades, until being bought out and run by out of state corporations.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to see an Alaskan Native Corporation buy the Carrs-Safeway stores to serve the road system, perhaps eventually also serving rural communities? Imagine the potential jobs and opportunities to leverage our logistics infrastructure, as well as profits retained in our state.

Ky

9/18/23 Alaska’s two biggest grocery chains to sell stores as part of merger. This business professor explains why.