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Sunday, June 07, 2009
Help Wanted
By Michael Hartranft
Journal Staff Writer
A top-to-bottom renovation of the historic La Posada de Albuquerque is in its final months, and management officials are eager to start filling the 140 jobs coming with the hotel's reopening this summer.
When the $30 million face-lift is complete, La Posada will re-emerge as the very "green," but still classic Hotel Andaluz, named for the Spanish region that inspired the design motif for the property when it was designed in the 1930s. Among the features: a restaurant with a Mediterranean vibe, rooftop lounge, a lobby bar and a mezzanine-level cultural center honoring the state's cultural institutions — not to mention the 107 guest rooms and suites.
"Right now, we're building from a core group of individuals and recruiting heavily for other leadership positions," said Alisa Mathews, founder and regional manager of the Park City, Utah-based Gemstone Hotels and Resorts, which will operate Andaluz. "Around the first of July, we hope to add about 10 of the leadership positions."
The "core" team is director of sales Kimberly Berry, executive chef Albert Bilotti, sales manager Robin Duffy and regional director Paul D'Andrea. Other leadership positions are engineering director, executive housekeeper, food and beverage manager, sous chef, chef d'cuisine, catering manager, banquet manager and assistant director of engineering.
Interviews for hourly positions are planned to begin in early July, Mathews said.
"That would include everything from restaurant servers to bussers, hosts/hostesses, culinarians of every level ... everything associated with the service of food and beverages," she said. "We'll certainly need a full contingent of room attendants and public space attendants to keep our hotel sparkling clean and beautiful, and we're looking for some engineering people to do preventive maintenance and day-to-day maintenance items that come up."
Adding in phone operators, guest service attendants and banquet servers — "typically any position that would be needed in a hotel will need to be filled here," Mathews said — total staffing will be about 140.
Her company, she said, wants people looking for a career opportunity, affording competitive wages, training and development that enable staff members to move up in the organization.
"Mostly, we're looking for people with great attitudes and a real love of serving people," Mathews said. "Experience is not as important as that attitude and that gracious, smiling and outgoing-type personality."
The 10-story hotel at the corner of Second and Copper NW opened in 1939 as the 164-room Albuquerque Hilton, the first built in the state by native son Conrad Hilton, and the fourth in the chain. It was New Mexico's first building to feature air conditioning, and for a time, the state's tallest. Guests who have signed the registration book over the years include such luminaries as Lyndon B. Johnson, actors Jimmy Stewart and Gregory Peck, and musicians Neil Young and Carlos Santana.
When the building changed hands in the late '60s, it became the Plaza Hotel, then La Posada in the 1980s when a multimillion-dollar restoration was undertaken with support of the city of Albuquerque and the National Register of Historic Places, which has listed the property for more than 25 years.
Gary Goodman, owner of Goodman Realty Group, purchased the building in 2005, closed it almost immediately and began the renovation, combining his passion for maintaining historic features with some 21st-century, very green technology, said Berry, director of sales and marketing. It hopes to be one of the first, if not the first, LEDE (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)-certified historically renovated hotels in the country, said Darin Sand, director of sustainability for Goodman.
One contractor's sole job is restoring the original wainscot in the hotel lobby. The windows have been replaced with energy-efficient double-pane glass but in frames that resemble the originals. A number of guest rooms were combined to make them more spacious. Each will have complimentary high-speed wireless along with such features as dual-flush toilets to save water, Berry said. Seventy-three rooftop solar panels will furnish about 60 percent of the energy needed to heat the hotel's water. The carpet and portions of the steel used in the renovation are made of recyclable materials.
Landscaping has been replaced and will be irrigated with a high- efficiency system using harvested water, Sand said.
Hotel Andaluz positions will be listed on its Web site, www.hotelandaluz.com/employment. Applicants can submit a cover letter and résumé online to jobs@hotelandaluz.com or by mail to Human Resources Director, 125 Second St. NW, Albuquerque, 87102.
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