Kodiak Welcomes Second Senior Housing Building

Emerald Heights from the front. Kayla Desroches/KMXT photos

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

There’s now a second housing option for Kodiak residents over 55. The Kodiak Island Housing Authority is ready to start accepting rental applications and has started giving tours of Emerald Heights, its new apartment complex on Near Island. Though built and operated by the Housing Authority, it does not have a low-income or Native Alaskan preference like the organization’s first senior housing building.

Kodiak Island Housing Authority’s Mindy Pruitt leads the tour, starting in the lobby, dominated by a giant sculpture of dock pilings by local artist Mark Whitteveen. Metal sea creatures cling to the wooden poles and sit on stones placed around the pilings. The top of the sculpture pokes through a square hole in the ceiling and into the floor above.

Beyond are seats, table, and even a virtual fire. I have to admit, I had to look twice.

Sculpture by Mark Whitteveen in Emerald Heights Lobby.

Pruitt then shows me the activity room upstairs. There’s a kitchen area with more tables and chairs. The same artist from the lobby also installed metal salmon swimming around the upper corners of the room. Near a window with an expansive view.

Activity room sculptures by Mark Whiteeveen.

 

Pruitt leads me through wide halls into several different rooms, all with gigantic bathrooms.

“Every bathroom in the apartment complex is large,” Pruitt says. “Just in anticipation if somebody ever needed a wheelchair or a walker, that they had plenty of room to navigate in their bathrooms, so they’re all very comfortable in size.”

They’re also built to be quiet.

“All the cupboards are slam resistant,” Pruitt says. “So if you’re a drawer slammer, it’s gonna be hard to slam here.”

The last apartment Pruitt shows me is the two-bedroom Wheelhouse suite.

“This is the largest one. This is the one that is the most unique probably in the property. It’s one thousand eight-three square feet, so it’s large.”

Pruitt says a friend inspired the suite’s name.

“He goes like ‘I feel like I’m in the helm of a big crabber.‘ And so he was like ‘We just need the wheel right here.’ And we came up with the wheelhouse suite.”

Priutt says the unit’s price is 2,300 dollars per month. She also says the range for the other apartments she showed me go from 1,550 dollars to 1,850 dollars not including electricity, cable, and landlines. Several apartments fall outside that range.

And Priutt does say that 55 is the lowest minimum age to apply for housing at Emerald Heights.

“There was a feasibility study done in Kodiak and that was one of the needs that was identified was housing for people 55 years of age.”

You can learn more about Emerald Heights here.