SEVEN DECADES LATER, CONRAD HILTON’S
DREAM NEARS REALITY—AGAIN
By Garry Boulard
A peek through the dusty front doors of the old La Posada Hotel at 125 Second Street NW reveals a glimpse of a promising future: hand-carved beams once covered with thick paint are now nearly completely sanded, bringing back for all to see the intricate wooden handiwork of a previous time.
“Everything that can be done to return this hotel to its original state is being done,” remarks Darren Sand, sustainability manager with the Goodman Realty Group, which bought the hotel at a bankruptcy auction in 2005.
“But that does not mean that this has been a project without challenges,” continues Sand. “In fact, there has been a long list of challenges.”
That’s because rather than just trying to bring the hotel back to the glory of its heyday, Goodman, through its construction company Integrated Properties Services Construction, is simultaneously ratcheting up the building’s energy efficiency potential with the goal of making it a LEED-certified property.
“Doing both of these things at the same time is one of the reasons why this is such a remarkable project,” continues Sand. “The last time I looked there were only six LEED-certified hotels in the country, and ours was the only one that was also a historic renovation.”
But the rarity of the project, thinks Tom Drake, should not be viewed as a deterrent. “There have been other projects in our state that have also tackled the issues of historic preservation and energy efficiency all at the same time,” he says.
Drake, a public relations specialist with the New Mexico Historic Preservation District, points in particular to the New Deal-era New Mexico Public Welfare Building in Santa Fe, which is now being used as part of the New Mexico attorney generals’ office complex.
“It was proposed that the building should be knocked down, but we were able to help save it,” recalls Drake. “And after that happened, it was both rehabilitated and subsequently certified gold by LEED.”
But what may make the La Posada project more daunting is its scale: ten floors with more than one hundred rooms.
“And we are doing it all very carefully,” continues Sand, noting that a search of old blueprints and photographs of the structure have helped to reveal what was real to the hotel at the time of its 1939 opening and what was added later.
“Architecturally, the lobby will look about the same, in terms of the arches, mezzanine and woodwork,” he explains. “But the large lobby bar and large reception desk that was about 25 feet long have been removed because they were not original to the hotel.”
What was original to the property, which has been renamed the Hotel Andaluz, was a kind of sleek elegance rising out of what was at the time regarded as a mostly desert cowboy town.
Conrad Hilton, a native of San Antonio, New Mexico, had tried for years to get the hotel built in downtown Albuquerque, but not until he left New Mexico and made his fortune building hotels elsewhere was Hilton able to return and see the building to completion.
Over the course of the next three decades, the hotel became the only place in the city to stay for prominent visitors, including Lucille Ball, Henry Fonda and Gregory Peck. The celebrity allure of the place was only heightened by the ongoing presence of Zsa Zsa Gabor, who was married to Hilton for five years in the mid-1940s; when she stayed in Albuquerque she reigned from the building’s top-floor suite.
His marriage to Gabor ended in divorce, and Hilton sold the Albuquerque property in 1970, nine years before his death. The hotel then went through a series of owners before being officially christened the La Posada De Albuquerque in 1983.
Now Goodman Realty is planning to sink at least $30 million into the combined renovation/ energy efficiency upgrade of the hotel. “There will be what are called ‘occupancy sensors’ that will lower the lights if a person leaves a room,” says Sand. “And of course, water conservation, which is especially important in a building of this size, will be emphasized.”
Although no firm date has been set, plans are currently in place for the Hotel Andaluz to reopen later this year, hopefully ushering in a new era of glamour in Albuquerque, but this time perhaps without the presence of Zsa Zsa, who today lives quietly in California.
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