Don't know about everybody, but more than a few taxpayers don't care for paying to build even more hangouts for bums, dopers, and robbers...
Remember, it took over a hundred years for Anchorage city government to reach its current inability/refusal to enact and enforce crime-prevention laws that, in other towns, seem to be accepted as normal.
In other words, despite the "oasis", nothing will change.
So we're stuck with a "downtown" a vestigial organ that exists only because every town has to have one, whose existence seems threatened by taxpayers who don't want a Seattle-wannabe milieu, residents who choose to live in, and buy what they want in suburban sprawl without risking life, limb, property, and parking "downtown".
Until fractious residents are taxed into making proper choices about where to live and shop, the problem seems unlikely to improve.