Boutique hotel continues transformation of southern edge of Taos

TAOS — A wave of new business development has breathed new life into the southern boundary of the Taos Historic District over the last five years, and perhaps no one has had a better vantage on the most recent transformation than Sarah Dzieweczynski, owner of the longtime local thrift store Re-Threads.

For nearly a decade, Dzieweczynski watched from behind her checkout counter as the neglected Indian Hills Inn, catty-corner from her shop, fell from its former glory days. Once a favored lodge for vacationers and community dances in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, the inn began a precipitous descent into disrepair, vandalism, vagrancy, code violations and, eventually, condemnation in 2018.

“It got to a point where pretty much daily there was either going to be an ambulance or cops there, and it was very run down, with boards on the windows,” she said, speaking with the Journal as customers thronged through her shop this month.

Today the boards are gone, and in place of the drab old hotel that once stood across the street beams Hotel Willa, a chic bone-white inn with clean contours, emblematizing a larger economic shift on Taos’ south side.

Recent growth along this part of the main drag through Taos — marked by new restaurants, recreational cannabis shops, a new dry cleaner and old standbys like a centrally located Smith’s grocery store and Taos Taproom — held just the type of investment potential Hotel Willa parent company Casetta is adept at identifying years in advance.

“Casetta looks for locations where there’s a rich local culture, a creative community and opportunities for meaningful collaboration with local businesses, artists and leaders,” reads an explainer of the California-based developer’s brand ethos. “The ability to positively contribute to the economic and cultural vitality of the area is a major consideration.”

Indian Hills was listed for sale in 2018 for $1.9 million, and Casetta purchased it the following year. The hotel group later applied for a $500,000 Community Development Block Grant through the Town of Taos, whose officials recognized the value in helping to complete the laundry list of renovations that were needed to uplift the blighted corner the abandoned inn occupied, from mold and asbestos remediation to room rebuilds.

“It was one of our biggest challenges,” said Santiago LaRoche, Hotel Willa’s general manager, “finding a way to really rebrand the property and bring back that love to the property — where people feel safe, where people feel kind of just able to make a memory again and enjoy their time.”

A key component of Casetta’s investment strategy at its Taos location and across the other five properties it operates in the U.S. involves partnering with established local entities, from other businesses to contractors to artists. Even the name of the hotel — chosen for the centuries-old willow that shades its interior plaza — was selected by locals during a renaming party Casetta group held in 2019.

One of the most onerous stages of Hotel Willa’s five-year renovation involved remodeling an adjacent building, which now houses a 2,000-square-foot art gallery featuring local and regional artists. Early on, Casetta contacted Paseo Project Executive Director J. Matthew Thomas, a local artist, architect and community organizer, to help manage the gallery and run an artist-in-residence program for the hotel.

“From the very beginning, they really came into town with the sense of wanting to connect with the community,” Thomas said. “We were contacted when they were looking for partners, and they wanted us to help with their artist-in-residence program because we already had one as a nonprofit. We felt it was a great partnership because we had always struggled with finding housing for our artists.”

After the hotel held its grand opening in May, Paseo Project announced the gallery’s first exhibit: “On Site: The Artisans of Hotel Willa.” The inaugural show featured more than a dozen artists, including the hotel’s first artist-in-residence, Paulina Ho, a New Mexico-based multidisciplinary artist whose work adorns parts of Hotel Willa.

Thomas even pushed to feature art from some of the hotel’s contractors in the gallery — a creature-like sculpture of metallic pipes sits on all fours in one corner of the gallery, and the hotel security guard’s pen and ink drawings occupy another. Highlighting the hotel’s sustainability efforts, a wall made of local plastic from TiLT, another Taos nonprofit, is featured in the gallery also and was used to build a front garden wall outside the hotel.

A distinctly, yet not overbearing, Southwestern aesthetic is woven throughout Hotel Willa, from the carefully chosen raw terracotta walls in the rooms to the warm cream colors of the courtyard, where diners nosh al fresco-style on artfully presented dishes from the restaurant Juliette, with a seasonal menu designed by Taos Pueblo-born chef Johnny Ortiz-Concha.

“We serve food every day, seven days a week, all the way till 10 p.m., which is really cool,” LaRoche said as he walked the hotel grounds earlier this month. “Then we’re doing brunch every Sunday as well. We do homemade pastries every morning from 7-11 a.m. We partner with Coffee Apothecary for the beans and tea.o.graphy for the tea. The bar’s open ’till 11:30 or midnight. We have a lot of locals coming in who say, ‘You’re the only ones open once I leave work.’”

On a rainy Tuesday evening, locals and tourists mingled in the hotel’s restaurant, sitting by the fire and sidling up to the bar, filing in for reservations in Juliette’s lofty dining room.

Matt Burns, a local actor and owner of a nearby cafe and naturally leavened sourdough bakery he opened in 2024, said more and more entrepreneurs are seeing potential to build community-based businesses on Taos’ south side.

“I saw that opportunity in the space when Tomorrow and Tomorrow came into it — a chance to restart, participate in the revitalization of the plaza and just more foot traffic Downtown,” Burns said. “It’s about Taos being a walkable place to spend a day and go from one spot to another spot. You know, stop for coffee here, then you can go for lunch at La Cueva (Cafe). Or you could go over to Suchness or Corner Office, which has been holding space the last couple years. All of a sudden, there’s a lot more close by to experience.”