Tucson Development Thread

[kaneui]

A convention center hotel with a "daring design" is usually an oxymoron, but Tucsonans have told the Sheraton hotel architect to be bold and create something iconic:


New tower hotel design should be daring, architects told
Design panel hopes to include local landscape features into downtown structure

by TEYA VITU
Tucson Citizen
12.16.2008

A man new to Tucson sparked applause when he challenged architects for the planned Sheraton Tucson Convention Center Hotel to be imaginative with their design. "I don't think you should be shy with what you do with (the tower). I think you can do some eloquent, wonderful forms," said Jerry Shapins, a retired landscape architect who moved to Tucson four weeks ago from Boulder, Colo. Shapins was one of about 100 people attending the first open house Monday for public input on what the 520-to-550-room, 27- or 28-story, $150 million dollar hotel at the northwest corner of the TCC should look like. Shapins' remark got the most reaction from the local crowd as well as catching the attention of architect Ken Martin, principal at DLR Group, the hotel project architect. "The big surprise for me today was two or three people saying, 'Be bold, be iconic, give us something that screams Tucson,' " Martin said. Martin said architects are often hamstrung by conservativeness of communities. He reads the open house reaction as a community "really open to see something different." "Open minds are always a lot more fun," Martin said.

James Bird, a Tucsonan who works at Raytheon Missile Systems, suggested putting a bar and grill on the hotel roof. "This is an open-air environment," Bird said in an interview. "We need to stick to that." Bird's suggestion to put the bar and grill "on top of the building" may not have been interpreted as the roof by Tony Traub, principal at Garfield Traub, the hotel's developer. "We're looking at putting a restaurant upstairs," Traub responded. Martin and DLR design leader Gary Worthy walked the crowd through a basic visual concept for the shape of the hotel and its meeting rooms and how it fits with the TCC, but the hotel is "not going to look anything like" the tower drawing seen Monday, Martin said.

Worthy said the design team is intrigued about working rock, crystal and slab into the hotel. It wants to incorporate features from the local landscape and wants a sense of what that means to the local community. Paul Abbott, a low voltage systems salesman, thinks the designers should get a sense of the landscape themselves. "I'd like to see them take a hike up to Sabino Canyon if they want to see shapes and landmarks," Abbott said. "That would tie them to what Tucsonans do."

DLR proposes putting one-third of the hotel on stilts to allow people to drive under the building to get to the lobby. Glass walls would enclose the lobby and a restaurant on the rest of the ground floor. "We're trying to blur the line between indoors and outdoors," Martin said. "We didn't want the whole footprint of the tower to impact the landscape, so we elevated it on legs and the part that touches the ground is really glass." A desert garden would sit between the tower and 30,000 square feet of Sheraton meeting rooms behind the tower. A 20-foot wide open space would lead into the lobby. "You'll arrive and just progress inside," Martin said.

DLR will return with preliminary designs to a second open house at the end of January, and full hotel designs will go to the City Council in April following a third open house at the end of March, Rio Nuevo director Greg Shelko said. The intention is to start construction after the 2010 gem shows and open the hotel in 2012.