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Sunday, March 23, 2008

Historic Hotel Is Undergoing a Green Renovation, and Everything Needs a New Life

By Susan Stiger
Of the Journal
    SPARE CHANGE: La Posada de Albuquerque is in pieces these days as it undergoes an extensive, and green, remodel. Parts of the 1930s Downtown hotel have become nylon, wood pellets, furniture and the underbelly of a road. And there may just be something left to come to your house— a porcelain sink, a tin light fixture or an original door.
    Goodman Realty Group, which owns the hotel, is going for a LEED— Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design— certificate for the project at 125 Second SW. So Darin Sand, former assistant to company CEO Gary Goodman, became a LEED-certified professional, in charge of recycling, reusing and relocating. Sand, a man for whom "landfill" is synonymous with failure, has to recycle at least 75 percent of everything that's taken out of the hotel to earn the certificate.
    Education was his first step— studying and testing to become an accredited professional in the eyes of the U.S. Green Building Council. That finished, he started keeping records, a whole binder full of documentation on his efforts, those that worked and those that didn't. No toilet's been too lowly, no bathtub too cumbersome for the promise of a new life.
    "All tin lighting is for sale, chandeliers from the lobby, original doors, miscellaneous furniture that's not original, vintage (porcelain) sinks," Sand said.
    Tin lighting— none of it original to the hotel— ranges from the $5 to $10 range for small pieces (in good supply) to $150 for corridor lights (about 20 left) to $600 and $800 for small and large chandeliers (about 12). Miscellaneous furniture includes headboards, $10 to $20, lamps, magazine racks, chairs, end tables and art from the hotel rooms, all variously priced. Vintage pedestal sinks— about 15— are going for $100 (fixtures are not original). Close to 200 window shutters are going for $25 each. If you're interested, call 881-0100.
    The landfill will never know what it's missing. Old wood worthy of a carpenter has become antique-style furniture, lesser wood, stove pellets; tons of carpet have become fiber or padding; bathtubs and some sinks are to become sculpture. Maybe some of this stuff— not the toilets or tubs— will end up in another Goodman Realty project— Winrock Center, which, by the way, they're still not talking about.
   
First Hilton here
    La Posada began as a Hilton Hotel in 1939, the first Conrad Hilton built here, despite his home ties to New Mexico. The remodel has been lengthy, closing the hotel in December 2005. If all goes according to plan, it may reopen this year, still rooted in Albuquerque's 1930s history but not looking like a stale grand dame.
    The formerly 114-room hotel is being overhauled to 107 rooms, which means expanding the tiny bathrooms. Evidently, the porcelain-over-cast-iron tubs were installed before the final walls of those bathrooms were put up, because there was just no getting them out through the doorways.
    "The tubs actually busted up pretty easily," said Sand. "With the first few, we cut the wall out and drug out the tubs."
    What do you do with 114 porcelain-over-cast-iron tubs? You keep the best ones to reuse, of course. But once everything was ripped out, Sand was left with 75 tubs weighing 350 pounds each, along with 35 cast-iron sinks— 12.21 tons of bathroom fixtures— that had seen a lot of tooth brushing and hair washing. After all those years of service, they deserved commemoration.
    And as it happened, after a phone call here and a lead there and a suggestion over there, Sand discovered his answer right here in New Mexico. Specifically, Tucumcari.
    Tucumcari's Mesalands Community College has a renowned sculpture program that holds yearly cast-iron pourings. "Many of the pieces cast here have been in international shows," said D'Jean Jawrunner, of the fine art faculty. Just when it seemed the tub and sink portion of Sand's project couldn't get any easier, it did.
    Bathtubs don't fly after all, and it's 176 miles to Tucumcari. With the kind of luck that should be reserved for buying lottery tickets, Sand discovered Mesalands has another handy program: truck driving. Three students, a teacher and a flat bed fitted with sides headed to Albuquerque to load up the tubs. They became molten cast iron March 14 in the school's annual cast-iron pour.
    The porcelain toilets had a less glorious reincarnation.
    "We called around the country, from New York to California to Washington state looking for people who would take porcelain," said Sand. "It's interesting who you talk to and how helpful they can be."
    Someone suggested using the porcelain to make bricks, but it would make white bricks, and there didn't seem to be much call for those here. Not so in Texas, where Sand did find one suitable brick maker— but it was right down the street from a toilet manufacturer. Many phone calls and dead ends later, 8,020 pounds of ground-up toilets are going underfoot— way underfoot— at Goodman's property, the base for a road he's building to his horse pasture. Probably as close as a horse gets to a toilet.
   
Home for the carpet
    Too bad he couldn't take the 31,321 pounds of carpet.
    A lot of carpet is recycled in Georgia— too many miles to cover in the name of environmental consciousness. Los Angeles proved to be the greenest approach Sand could find. Just to push his luck, he asked Mesalands if its trucking students could use more experience. Because it's a nonprofit, the school hauled the carpet for free and Goodman Realty Group gave it a $2,500 donation.
    But Mesalands' biggest score came from the hotel bathrooms. You don't come across 12 tons of free cast iron every day. To thank La Posada, art students are making a cast-iron sculpture for the hotel lobby.
    If you have some Spare Change— business or money news you're not likely to see elsewhere in the paper— please e-mail sstiger@abqjournal.com or call 823-3820.
    For Sale
    Interested in owning a remnant of La Posada de Albuquerque? Built by Conrad Hilton, the downtown hotel dates back to 1939. Some items are original to the hotel; some are not. Call 881-0100 for information on everything from tin lighting to magazine racks to headboards to pedestal sinks.