Catalyzing Cafeteria Construction

Meet and Eat

“Not only does it work great to have tacos next to weed,” says Catalyst Cannabis founder and CEO Will Schneider, laughing at a joke he’s heard before, “but it’s also an underserved area in the community to have nice communal spaces where people can meet and eat.”

The retail shop opened in July after more than a year of renovation. Work continued into the second half of 2025 to convert the remainder of the former bank into a food court.

Schneider says he recruited El Green-Go’s to fill the space. “We did a lot of the construction to make sure we could land someone like El Green-Go’s. We spent a ton of money just to make sure there’s utilities on that side, bathrooms, and everything. None of that existed before, and I knew it would be a huge expense for a mom-and-pop startup,” he says. “To the chagrin of some of my investors; they weren’t too stoked about that, but as a result it made it really attractive to land El Green-Go’s.”

Indeed, Howie was pleased with the landlord’s design approach. “We’re all natural colors, natural feeling, slat wood, stuff like that. Natural polished concrete for the floors,” he says. “We were right on the same page at the beginning.”

The food court also features a café operated by Chugach Mountain Roasters, which has retail locations in Spenard and Midtown and supplies coffee to other outlets such as Alyeska Resort and, as it happens, Ginger.

Schneider had hoped to host a juice bar, too, but there wasn’t enough square footage. Even so, with food, coffee, and cannabis under one roof, Schneider compares his combined space to the multi-tenant shopping center that Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop set up at Seventh Avenue and K Street.

That location served as an inspiration for Erin Hamilton, who led the design for Catalyst Cannabis. “I definitely don’t copy; I try really hard to make things distinct,” she says. “But also, you know, it’s a gathering place. It’s a good place for meetings.”

Whether for lunch or dinner, the Northern Lights and Boniface area is short of hangouts. Hamilton says, “It felt like there was a need for some place like that. Healthy food, really good coffee, a glass of wine, you know, 5 p.m. after work.” Indeed, El Green-Go’s will have a beer and wine license.

And before work, Howie is devising a breakfast menu for El Green-Go’s. “We’re gonna be doing a cubano with smoked pork, and we’re adding corn cakes instead of pancakes,” he says. “We wanted to make sure we’re supplying an actual breakfast.”

Design Drives the Menu

Smoked food is a specialty at El Green-Go’s food truck, so the same goes for the restaurant. “We were going to order this giant smoker from Texas, but shipping was almost half the price of the already $20,000 smoker,” Howie recounts. “So we got a local guy making it now, who actually made our smoker at our current location as well.”

He’s looking forward to having office space and a walk-in cooler. “Our walk-in cooler is the size of the food truck,” he notes.

Kitchen equipment dictates the menu. Case in point: Howie couldn’t afford to install a hood vent. “So we can’t be grilling and sautéing all over the place,” he says. Thus, “A big part of our process is we smoke the meat, so we don’t have all this fat and stuff in the air and everything a hood vent would be needed for.”

Smoking and then vacuum-sealing prepped food controls fat splattering. “That’s allowed us to save a big chunk of change. If you’re opening a restaurant, one-third of your investment is in the hood vent,” Howie observes. “It’s mind boggling when the engineer comes in and starts talking hood vent. ‘Wait, it’s gonna be how much? For just a hood vent?’ All my [other] equipment doesn’t cost that much; I can fill an entire restaurant with ovens and sauté stations… including my giant walk-in cooler! All that together doesn’t add up to what the hood vent would be.”

To put numbers on it, Howie recently refurbished the former Bubbly Mermaid champagne and oyster bar on D Street, restyled as Pearl. That bottom-story location would’ve driven vent installation to about $250,000 he says, and even El Green-Go’s would’ve cost about $180,000.

Air handling was also a major concern on the other side of the building. Schneider says mechanical design had to carefully collect, filter, and separate cannabis odors from the retail shop. Indeed, the funk on the sales floor is overpowering, but not even a wisp escapes outside the door.

Shared Language, Different Expression

The entrance to Catalyst Cannabis includes a roll-up garage door, which of course was not part of the bank branch. It’s meant to echo other Catalyst Cannabis locations in Spenard and Muldoon. Hamilton credits former colleague Marya Pillifant with that design flourish. Other elements of the shared design language include oversized posters. “And we did a really big botanical cannabis leaf like on the wall in Spenard,” Hamilton notes.

Yet each location has its own identity, by Schneider’s request. At the new shop, “They wanted it to be like an Apple Store, so that was kind of where we started,” Hamilton explains. “We were going for, like, spare and white.” That contrasts with the Spenard store, which has a more rustic and adventurous motif.

Design features carry over from the retail side to the food court. “Like the vertical wood paneling that’s in Catalyst,” Hamilton says. “We’re going to use some of that on the other side just to warm it up and maybe buffer some sound.”

The shop also inherits a unique feature from the former bank: the vault. “It’s so cool. It was kind of the focal point of the whole room,” says Hamilton. “It’s so shiny silver and cool looking, although it’s a little disconcerting to go into it.”

Hamilton has been working with Schneider for years, as Catalyst Cannabis has grown along with its decade-old industry. “I really love working with a client like Will because he places trust in me, and he really just lets me go,” she says. “We’ve been working together for so long that we both understand what the Catalyst vibe is, so it’s really nice to have that kind of working relationship. I’ve had that with other clients too.”

Into the Gray Area

To be clear, Hamilton is not an architect; she’s an artist. “I do mostly brand identity and websites,” she says, “but it’s kind of expanded into everything, like interior design or, you know, merch and packaging.”

Hamilton does collaborate with architects a lot; her design studio even shares space with one. And she’s found that her job tends to encroach on that profession. “If I’m the brand designer, then I need to have a seat at the table, you know, to make sure that it’s the right colors and the right graphics and the right signage,” she says. “It’s kind of turning into this whole extension of my practice, even though I would never say that I’m a commercial interior designer.”

Architecture and interior design are professional qualifications that Hamilton acknowledges she does not possess. “It definitely is stretching my skill set,” she says.

A certified architect must check Hamilton’s designs for technical details. For the Catalyst Cannabis project, for instance, the architectural design was by Daniel H. Clift of Determine Design. “She created images and we interpreted them into plans. We worked together to transform her visions into plans,” Clift explains, crediting Hamilton with the concept and material finishes.

Conscious that she’s treading in a gray area, Hamilton once approached Clift at an event. She recalls, “I apologized if I was stepping on his toes. And he was like, ‘No, I really don’t want to do the design part. I just want to do the technical part.’ So it was kind of perfect.”

As Clift puts it, “I like working with Erin. I tend to be more the pragmatist. I try to solve problems; having someone challenge me or throw curve balls at me creates more interesting results.”

He looked forward to the Catalyst Cannabis project as an exciting challenge. “With Will’s attention to detail and Erin’s flair on the team, we could make something trendy happen to this old concrete shell,” says Clift. “The old bank building on Northern Lights is a landmark I have been driving by since I was a child. Making it into something new and fun for the community resonated with me.”

Budding Industry

Caution surrounding legalized marijuana sales affects part of the Catalyst Cannabis building: the former bank’s drive-through window. It’s blocked off because the retail shop can’t use it.

The Anchorage Assembly has deadlocked on an ordinance to allow cannabis retailers to sell to drive-up customers. Schneider compares it to drive-through pharmacies; opponents consider it tantamount to drive-through liquor sales, which are permitted in about thirty states but not in Alaska.

If the Assembly doesn’t budge, Howie says he’s ready to use the window for food sales, after some reconfiguration of interior walls.

Federal marijuana laws have also stood in the way. Clift observes, “The project took a long time; we started design in early 2023. This was due largely to financial challenges. It is not easy to fund MJ retails.”

Even so, “We actually have a traditional bank loan with this, a construction loan, which is a lot of hoops for us to jump through because it’s cannabis,” Schneider says. “Between the bank loan and moving on other projects, it’s taken a long time for this one to come to maturation.”

In the second decade of legalized marijuana in Alaska, the industry’s frontrunners are graduating to landlord status. “Out of the three properties we own, this is the one that makes a decent cashflow because we will have a multi-tenant space,” Schneider says. “We still count on the cannabis side to foot as much of the bill as possible… but having a tenant pay rent really is helpful.”

In a saturated market—Anchorage has about one retailer for every 2,000 potential customers, Schneider estimates—Catalyst Cannabis is fortunate to be capitalizing its profits. “We’ve been able to pour money into reinvestment,” he says. “We’ve been focused on making a portfolio that has hard assets in it. The weed industry… could go away. It’s still federally illegal… but real estate is here to stay. It’s nice to start putting that in the bank account.”

Schneider attributes his financial solidity to a strong brand. Hamilton agrees, noting that the brand influenced the physical design. “He started telling me about how he wanted to position Catalyst as more of an upscale place that was, like, safe for older professionals,” she says, “something that felt nice and safe for people who just might not feel as comfortable.”

Catalyst Cannabis has earned Best of Alaska Business recognition in 2021, 2022, 2024, and 2025 from its loyal fanbase, not just for its products and services but for its ethos, which stands for catalyzing community.

Crossing Over

When a “Best Food Truck” category was added to the Best of Alaska Business survey in 2023, El Green-Go’s made the grade, having already been named by Food Network as the Best Food Truck in Alaska. Putting down roots in a restaurant could qualify its vegan burritos and North Carolina barbecue for new categories of honors.

On the longer horizon, Howie envisions El Green-Go’s as a franchise chain, a healthier option than most other fast food. “All of our sauces are made vegan so everything can cross over,” he explains. “There’s not enough vegans in town to support a restaurant that’s fully vegan, so you have to be fully vegan but you also have to be able to cross over.”

He expects to open another restaurant location in a few years. “We’re building another one after this,” says Howie. “Might even do one out of state.” He sees a market for his menu in his home state of North Carolina.

For most of 2025, his wife was running El Green-Go’s while Howie was occupied with Pearl. Where Bubbly Mermaid was cozy and funky, Pearl is as classy as a flute of champagne, with Art Deco flourishes combined with Charleston charm. The nautically naughty speakeasy is gone, filled by an enlarged kitchen. Howie hopes to add a banquet room next door.

As big a development as El Green-Go’s expansion to East Anchorage has been, Howie admits he’s passionate about oysters, so Pearl has divided his attention. “I was really excited to get this place up and going,” he says. “Of course, we knew this was going to open the same year. So I go, ‘Okay, well, do we actually try to pull this off?’ But the location that Will’s got is just so perfect.”