The sprawling Campbell Lake mansion where the former owner of the Anchorage Daily News once hosted President Barack Obama has been sold.
The sale price and the buyer are unknown, but the listing was for $3.2 million when Alice Rogoff put it on the market in October, 2020.
Rogoff lost the Anchorage Daily News in a bankruptcy settlement in 2017. She and her husband, David Rubenstein (whose home on Nantucket Island is being rented by President Joe and First Lady Jill Biden this weekend) divorced last December.
Rogoff relocated mostly full time to Alaska after buying the Anchorage Daily News from McClatchy in 2014 for $34 million. She already had controlling interest in the upstart online-only Alaska Dispatch and folded the two organizations together, renaming the entire publication the Alaska Dispatch. Her move to Alaska prompted friendly questions from the fawning Washington Post in a story titled “What’s this Washington insider and billionaire’s wife doing in Alaska?”
“Her rising profile in Alaska, her marriage to one of the country’s most successful private-equity managers, and the physical and metaphorical distance from her life — and husband — in Washington have made observers in both places curious about her ambitions,” the Post reported.
Her ambitions soon became clear as she helped engineer a win for Bill Walker in 2014, when he challenged former Gov. Sean Parnell and won — with the help of the media that she owned.
The Binkley Company, owned by the John Binkley family in Fairbanks, bought the paper for $1 million and saved it from extinction.
Rogoff’s home on the lake has 7,170 square feet, five bedrooms, seven bathrooms, and a dock for her floatplane, which she wrecked on July 3, 2016 in Halibut Cove. She was able to swim away from the downed Cessna.
Rogoff also has property on the East Coast and she publishes Arctic Today, an online news outlet with a global look at exclusively Arctic matters that she was allowed to take with her when the bankruptcy was settled.
She did her damage and is done with Alaska now.
Of course, Alaska inflicted a little damage on her as well.
I always thought it telling that Gov. Walker would be listening to the financial advice of Alice Rogoff, part of his Kitchen Cabinet. How many times has she gone bankrupt? How much state money went down with her downtown art gallery, and where did the art pieces go?
Did Johne Binkley purchase the property? Maybe a railroad spur could be built straight to the front door. ??
LOL. Why not, Ted? He has personal business interests that reach both ends of the ARR, from Seward to Fairbanks. Not bad profits when you get to stay on the ARR Board for 30 years. It’s all about business. And working on the railroad all day pays benefits and vast fortunes.
Didn’t Ryan Binkley and his wife purchase the old Railroad Depot up in Fairbanks from John Binkley while John was Chairman of the Board of the Alaska Railroad Corporation? Pretty interesting purchase. They bought the old facility for a dime and converted it into a daycare business. Even got PPP money to pay salaries. Who said corporate welfare and self-dealing are not on the playlist for the Left-wing ADN?
Good find, Ellen. How much PPP money did the ADN receive during the pandemic? How much PPP money did the Binkley Family tourism businesses receive? It looks like Left-wing corporate welfare is an “all in the family” business.
Is the award -winning ADN capable of objectively researching and investigating a story about corporate welfare abuses by its owners?
?????
Under a little more remodeling, the house certainly could temporarily house a good large size of men or women out of jail and recovering addictions. This would be the best use of such a house than just being a lonely home for an individual or a place where the parents lose all their kids at home. Hahaha
Alice fooled everyone thinking she could be a pilot, well we know how that ended. It proves that money can’t buy class, brains, or morality. Just ask her ex-husband.
Another moneyed nincompoop flailing about in life. Pffft!
No wonderland here… This Alice is a bad dream that keeps coming back to disturb our sleep and peace. Will she ever go away? After stiffing her creditors in bankruptcy, does she get to keep the proceeds of the sale? The tune from the Airplane is apt – Go Ask Alice. BTW, please don’t tar & feather Johnnie Binkley over the ADN – Ryan does not appear to share his Dad’s politics, and gives the ADN staff free rein to spin left… Go Ask Alice.
What exactly are Johne Binkley’s politics?
Julia….
Ka-ching, Ka-ching.
$$$$$.
Just another east coast elite spreading their misery throughout the land. They use their media to spread misinformation and propaganda. Even though paper publications are all financially hurting these days, these people seem to rake in millions.
If we truly want a representative democracy, why on earth do we allow the likes of Rogoff, Bezos, Soros, Zuckerberg or Bloomberg participation in our municipal and state elections? After all, it is OUR representatives whom we are trying to elect. Not theirs.
The only way Alaskans will ever be free of those socialist billionaires is by enacting campaign finance reform that prohibits contributions from persons and organizations outside a candidate’s district. The Left is throwing crazy money at our election systems – municipal, state, school board, judicial and district attorney – and they buying our politicians.
After reading this, it’s hard to tell who holds the bigger grudge against Rogoff – MRAK, or Medred!
Let it go, folks.
Let’s go, Whidbey!
If Binkley wants to restore readership, why doesn’t he put a stop to their radical left wing reporting? A lot of people might start reading it if they did that. You know, report in a way that reflects Alaskan values and priorities.
The lefties and corporate/leftist advertisers are all they have available to them. They will never appeal to moderates or conservatives, so they have to satisfy the people who will read them. Back when Anchorage had two newspapers, which paper box they had told you all you needed to know about who lived there.
I think Suzanne should sell MRAK shirts and hats.
The Walker/Mallott team defeated the Parnell/Sullivan team in 2014, not 2010. There was a lot of buyer’s remorse in just a few short years after that. Alice Rogoff shelled out $34 million for a newspaper whose sole purpose it seems, was to take down a sitting governor with endless stories about misdoings at the National Guard. Those stories disappeared after the election – mission accomplished. Still, there is some justice as the paper sold a few years later for $33 million less. Pocket change for her ex David Rubenstein, but maybe a little more painful for Ms. Rogoff. Mr. Walker is again running for governor, testing the short term memory of the Alaskan voter.
Does anyone understand why, given the listing price, the City of Anchorage has it assessed at about half that?
There are so few high end home sales that it is difficult to find comps in that price range.
The pervasive and odious stench of arrogant statist elitism from the former owner is almost impossible to remove, from this as from any structure, and is known to lower property values significantly.
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