La Fonda’s future inspired by its past

Renovations at the hotel, which opened in 1922, are designed to restore the historic landmark to its original grandeur, said Jennifer Kimball, the hotel board’s chair, during a recent presentation.

“We want to get back to the bones of this hotel,” she said, “… so we’ve settled on a period when the design was clean.

“That’s why we’re going back to the ’20s.”

Inspired by the understated Southwestern style of architects Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter and John Gaw Meem, who designed the iconic southwest corner of the hotel with its bell tower in 1929, the project is scheduled to begin in January and be competed in time for next year’s Indian Market.

Barbara Felix Architect and Design of Santa Fe and Bradbury Stamm Construction of Albuquerque have been contracted for the project.

Included in the design is the renovation of 164 of its 178 rooms and the hotel corridors, as well as the repairing and replacing of exterior woodwork based on Meem’s original drawings. And, this time, they’re sticking with a single design aesthetic, Kimball said.

“When you look around, you can see all the changes we’ve made throughout the decades — there’s the ’60s, and the ’70s, and the ’20s and the ’30s,” said Kimball, while pointing at various elements in the hallways and rooms of the hotel. “So with this project, what we want to do is unify the designs.”

The most noticeable change to the exterior of the hotel, Felix said, is the addition of a staircase that leads from the first floor to street level. An exit onto Water Street which was closed off during an earlier renovation project will also be reopened, she added.

“When the building was originally built, it met the exiting standards,” said Felix, who is the architect for the project. “Now that codes are more stringent, we just want to make sure guests are safe exiting the building. So that’s really the most significant exterior change.”

And while interior changes are not subject to approval by the city’s Historic Districts Review Board, exterior changes are. Felix said she is scheduled to go before the board on Tuesday.

As for the interior changes, five floors of the hotel will be renovated, with each room — aside from the 14 privately accessed rooftop rooms and suites — receiving improvements, including hardwood flooring in place of carpeting, new and restored handcrafted headboards, remodeled bathrooms and modern accoutrements such as MP3-player alarm clocks and flat-panel televisions hung inside wooden frames.

“We’re just trying to honor the past while meeting the demands of today’s traveler,” Kimball said.

And while the project will affect roughly 80,000 of La Fonda’s 297,000 square feet of space, Kimball promises it will be business as usual during the eight-month-long project.

“It will be done in two phases. The restaurants and shops will remain open, and we’ll have rooms available at all times,” she said. “The first phase, we’ll have about 100 rooms out in what we call the east wing. The second phase will be the west and north wings, which has only about 60 rooms.”

Kimball added that, even though parts of the hotel will be closed during renovations, there will be no layoffs of the hotel’s roughly 200 employees. “Even though there won’t be as many rooms to clean, we’ll just have to find other things for them to do.”

The current project is part of a three-stage plan. Stage one was the renovation of the La Plazuela restaurant, which was completed in 2009. And the final stage, Kimball said, will be the renovation of the lobby and common area, but no date has been scheduled.

Kimball wouldn’t disclose the cost of the project.