71-year-old Hotel Gets Green Makeover
Photo Credit: Version: ©2009 Ramona Willis d’Viola/ilumus photography.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Dozens of 350-pound cast-iron tubs and a truckload of porcelain toilets, aren’t easy items to recycle. That is unless you are a savvy property developer with a penchant for green construction and an inclination for finding a way.
Such was the case with Darin Sand at Goodman Realty Group of Albuquerque.
Known as the La Posada de Albuquerque Hotel until just five years ago, the now renamed Hotel Andaluz sported rotting windows from over a half-century ago, outdated mechanical systems, and damaged carpeting. The hotel had been founded in 1939 by American hotelier Conrad Hilton, and was the fourth hotel he built in his career.
Enter Goodman Realty in 2005, acquiring the languishing La Posada in an effort to preserve local history.
“One of the reasons [Goodman Realty] bought it is because we are a local developer and we understand the history and the importance of this Albuquerque landmark,” says Sand about the hotel, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. “La Posada was a functioning hotel when we bought it but its last upgrade was in 1984 — and it looked its age.”
Photo Credit: Version: ©2009 Ramona Willis d’Viola/ilumus photography.
When renovations began in autumn of 2005, workmen pulled more than of 26,000 pounds of 1930s-era cast-iron bathtubs out of the hotel. At first, Sand puzzled over how he would dispose of the tubs. After a little digging around, he says, Sand came across a proper suitor for the seemingly pieces of junk.
When renovations began in autumn of 2005, workmen pulled more than of 26,000 pounds of 1930s-era cast-iron bathtubs out of the hotel. At first, Sand puzzled over how he would dispose of the tubs. After a little digging around, he says, Sand came across a proper suitor for the seemingly pieces of junk.
“We didn’t want them to go to the landfill, but it wasn’t easy figuring out what to do,” he recalls. “I came across Mesalands Community College, which is located about three hours from here in a little town called Tucumcari. Once a year they do an iron pour in their fine arts program, where they melt down cast iron to make sculptures.” The tubs were hauled to the community college where enthusiastic students began working on them.
The decades-old toilets at the hotel required a different approach.
“We decided to grind up the toilets and use them as a base-course for a private road,” Sand says. “But first, I had to find a place here that would grind toilets for us.
Sand said that name recognition of the hotel opened doors in finding help on the project.
“Every time I called someone about a project for the La Posada hotel and [explained] how we were making the building green, people recognized the hotel and helped out,” says Sand. “I even found one rock yard that was willing to grind toilets.” 
The hotel’s deteriorating woodwork and carpeting presented other opportunities. A portion of the building’s woodwork was re-used in remodeling the hotel. Materials that weren’t salvageable were ground up for stove wood pellets. About 75,000-square-feet of carpeting was transported to a carpet recycling facility in Los Angeles.
The herculean efforts led to Sand and Goodman Realty earning the 2010 “Most Innovative Recycling Project of the Year” award by the New Mexico Recycling Coalition.
Today, Hotel Andaluz is consuming 80 percent less water than it was five years ago, due in part to low-flow showerheads, dual-flush toilets and a rainwater collection system that captures runoff in three 2,500-gallon outdoor cisterns and uses it in irrigation.
A host of other sustainable features, including furnishings made of rapidly renewable bamboo, a 73-panel rooftop solar thermal system that provides 60 percent of the building’s domestic hot water, and an advanced energy control system, provide about $18,000 per year in gas and electricity savings.
Hotel Andaluz is now pursuing LEED Gold, which would make it one of the few – if not the only – LEED Gold certified historic hotel in the country. All changes done to the public spaces and the exterior of the hotel were completed within National Register of Historic Places guidelines, says Sand, including the restoration of windows originally installed in the 1930s.
“If you did not know the Hotel Andaluz story, you wouldn’t know it’s a green hotel when you walked through the door,” says Sand. “A lot of people do come just because it is a green hotel. And we try to educate our guests about the building by offering tours of our solar system.”
Studio Southwest Architects of Albuquerque served as the architect on the project.