During the 1970s, many Downtown Tucson buildings, including the 1917 Santa Rita addition, were covered with layers of stucco and new facades, obscuring their original designs.

Today, many of these buildings are being “excavated” and restored to their earlier glory. For example, many of the original details of the Compass Bank at 120 N. Stone were revealed after a concrete covering was removed. The Roy Place (Walgreens) Building at the corner of Stone and Pennington is now being restored.
Regrettably, buildings such as the Thrifty Drugstore on Congress Street were torn down before it was known that the original building was well-preserved beneath the false facade. In that case, a beautiful concrete art deco building was lost.
Irreplaceable landmark buildings like the Santa Rita addition are invaluable to the future of Downtown. They create a unique sense of place and shape the character of our city.

If the Santa Rita Hotel has the possibility of being restored, this is an extraordinary opportunity for economic revitalization and celebration of the city’s individuality.
This project has the power to define the future of Downtown redevelopment. Restored and integrated into a new project, it can set a higher architectural standard and demonstrate our community’s commitment to preserving our shared past.

If this building is demolished without serious conversations and honest evaluations of its reuse, a gloomy message is delivered to all potential Downtown investors.
Any citizen can stand on Scott Avenue and discern the clues to the original Santa Rita Hotel. Through the cracking plaster of the Santa Rita’s western facade, the original window configuration just below the surface can be seen. The design concepts of 1917 are still available to be recovered.

The Santa Rita Hotel also represents a tremendous quantity of embedded energy that can be conserved if the building is restored. In our energy-dependent economy, the greenest building is the one that is already built.

The irony is that the current plan for the property calls for a new Tucson Electric Power Co. headquarters built to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Platinum standards, but the plan does not include the re-use of the existing 1917 Santa Rita building.

Preserving and restoring the Santa Rita Hotel and other early Tucson buildings is not an argument for stopping or limiting economic reinvestment in Downtown. Actually, it focuses investment in the architectural heritage that makes Tucson special.

It is a myth that economic reinvestment and historic preservation are mutually exclusive. The only Downtown reinvestment projects that have succeeded are rooted in historic preservation, including the Hotel Congress, the Rialto Theater, the Temple of Music and Art and the Historic Depot. If TEP can come to the conclusion that preservation is a community need, everyone wins.

It always seems so easy to find reasons why a building needs to be torn down. Instead, we should be looking at all the reasons why it should be saved. We all observe that the “revitalization” of the 1960s and 1970s was a catastrophic mistake. It is an enormous irony that those mistakes — the literal covering up of the facades — are today being used to justify demolition.

We will lose the distinctive quality of our Downtown if we perpetuate the mistakes of the 1970s. Let’s invest in Downtown, minimize our energy expenditures through green revitalization and restoration, maximize the return on our investment dollars, and preserve our heritage for future generations.

If you share my view, please visit www.ci.tucson.az.us/mcc.html or write or call your City Council member.

Credits: Demion Cinco

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