State of the Art Deco

Hotel Monroe Evokes Luxurious Past with Style

Scheduled to open later this year, Hotel Monroe will harken back to the high art deco style of the 1930’s. The 12-story renovation will feature a roof-top pool and a wine bar located in an old basement bank vault.

Scottsdale-based developer Grace Communities has taken a leading role in the rebirth of downtown Phoenix since February 2006, when their contemporary 34-story condominium tower 44 Monroe broke ground. The $75 million project is wrapping up this summer.

Most of the Professional Building’s exterior, including the original 1930’s-era operable windows, will be restored during its conversion into a boutique hotel.

Photo courtesy Scott Blair

While Phoenix has made strides in developing its downtown with a plethora of publicly-funded projects, 44 Monroe was one of just a few major private developments until recently.

Not content to fade out of the limelight and let other developers take the spotlight, Grace returned for an encore worthy of old Hollywood glamour with the 150-room Hotel Monroe. This historic restoration project turns a long-abandoned 1930’s era bank into a gleaming, art deco-inspired boutique hotel.

Named after the street it graces and just a block from 44 Monroe, the hotel will occupy the 12-story former home of Valley National Bank, also known as the Professional Building.

Phoenix-based Summit Builders is leading the construction under a $27 million contract, which doesn’t include the liberal use of high-end interior furnishings provided by Dakota Jackson Inc., a New-York based designer and manufacturer of high-end art deco-styled furniture.

Construction began in earnest last December, though much of the demolition and abatement had been done much earlier under a separate contract.

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The project’s architect, the Phoenix office of Westlake Reed Leskosky, was originally brought on in early 2007 to help navigate the historic preservation.

“The design concept was to restore as much of the historic fabric that is still in existence,” says Richard Sourbrine, AIA, project director with the architecture firm. “Most of the exterior is still historic and will be restored.” This includes literally hundreds of vintage, operable windows on the exterior and on either side of a 3-ft channel that separates the main building from the façade facing Monroe Street.

While structurally sound, the building is not without its surprises. “Walking through it, you’d think it was a concrete building,” says Karl Nicol, project executive with Summit. “But it’s actually a steel building with concrete over the steel for fireproofing - that’s how they did it 80 years ago.”

Despite this overzealous fire protection, other areas required a more modern technique. The building’s concrete floor plates all had to be fireproofed to bring them up to present-day 2-hour fire ratings between floors, Nicol says. The solution was to use the same spray-on method used for modern steel buildings, but in this case on the concrete floors.

Rooms will be furnished in the art deco style, while still featuring modern hotel amenities.

Photo courtesy Grace Communities

This proved especially difficult in the two-story lobby, the former bank’s main hall, which is being completely restored. “We have so much work going on up inside the lobby ceiling, but we have to maintain the ceiling at the same time,” Nicol says.

The lobby’s large columns are being re-plastered, and ornate capitals are being reproduced from an original cast. Along with a check-in area, the lobby will be skirted by the hotel’s signature restaurant, Gazelle, as well as a ‘champagne boudoir’ and a ‘crystal piano bar’.

Other areas being restored are the elevator lobbies on each floor, plus the building’s three vintage elevators. “Some of the main colorings that you’ll see throughout the entire building will be bronze, brass and gold,” says Grace’s in-house interior designer Nancy Doll. “When you walk into the lobby, you’ll see a lot of the original brass and bronze work on the elevator doors and molding.”

But the project’s most unique space will likely be the basement’s restored bank vault with its two massive doors intact, embedded into 2-ft-thick reinforced concrete walls. It will become a high-end wine bar featuring a wine-inspired color scheme. Visitors descending the elevator will feel “as if being dropped into a wine decanter,” Doll says.

Several additional openings were required through the vault’s walls, which took concrete cutters weeks to accomplish due to the brittle, aging concrete, Nicol says.

Accessing the basement bar could be an adventure worthy of a 1930’s spy thriller. “A wall in the lobby will appear to be brass safety deposit boxes,” Doll says. “One of the boxes will actually be a key. If you know the right number, the wall will move and you’ll enter a secret passageway to an elevator,” which descends to the bar.

The basement’s restored bank vault has two massive doors, embedded into 2-ft-thick reinforced concrete walls. It will become a high-end wine bar featuring a wine-inspired color scheme.

Photo courtesy Scott Blair

The previous demolition had cleared out all of the interior office walls in the upper stories. “There are two sets of columns right down the middle that define the corridor,” Sourbrine says. “On either side where the offices were, is where the hotel rooms will now be. You’re not getting a lot of square footage per room but we are doing other things, design-wise, to enhance the space with a lot of amenities.” These include marble counters in the bathrooms, and modern hotel conveniences such as a full-service spa and a rooftop pool/bar area, which required additional steel framing for structural support.

All of the building’s mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems are being completely replaced, Nicol says. As with many downtown projects of late, Hotel Monroe will bring in chilled water for its mechanical systems from Northwind.

Working in congested downtown Phoenix has been difficult with all the construction going on, Nicol says. “Logistically, we are in trouble here. There’s nowhere to put stuff and there’s no parking.”

There’s also no room for a tower crane or manlift, either. “The way these historic windows are, we don’t have openings big enough,” he says.

Fortunately, the building has a shorter, three-story section in back beside an alleyway. “We shored it all up underneath and built a steel support, then set a smaller crane on top of the roof of the third floor,” Nicol says. Materials are picked off the trucks in the alley by the crane and loaded through the fire escapes.

The project is currently on track for completion in late 2008.

UPDATE:

Since this article was published, the project has stalled due to the bankruptcy of the project’s primary lender, Mortgages Ltd. Visit our blog page for more information at http://www.southwest.construction.com/opinions/blogs/.

Key Players

Owner: Grace Communities
GC: Summit Builders
Architect: Westlake Reed Leskosky
Interior Design: Grace Communities
Subcontractors: Arizona Fire Protection; Arrow Lath & Plaster; Mechanical Solutions; Secon Specified Electric Contractors; Petra Plumbing; Arizona Partition Inc.

Useful Sources

To learn more about the hotel, visit its website at www.hotelmonroe.com

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