A few blocks away, the 67 employees at the Alaska Vocational Technical Center train future oil workers, cooks and boat builders. And the state Spring Creek maximum security prison on the other side of Resurrection Bay employs 217 people. Some 275,000 people are expected to pass those seven cash registers during the SeaLife Center's first year, with most coming this summer. We're all looking at trying to do things, but the wheels are spinning at the moment,'' said Kerry Martin, Seward's community development director. Seward has an attractive, compact downtown.
Storefronts hug the curb, giving the district a close, friendly feel.
It's easy to walk down Fourth Avenue from shop to shop, which is what residents did when the street system was designed in 1906. Automobiles weren't a fact of life then. People walked, rode horses and drove dog teams. Nobody in that era would have figured that each store might one day need its own parking lot, Martin said. The idea for a Seward marine research center was born in the late 1980s, before the Exxon Valdez oil spill.