Life Along the Streetcar with Tom Heath from The Heath Team Nova Home Loans

This week we have Moniqua Lane to talk about the Citizen Hotel, her latest boutique hotel project in Downtown Tucson.

Today is April 11th, my name is Tom Heath and you’re listening to “Life Along the Streetcar”.

Each and every Sunday our focus is on Social, Cultural and Economic impacts in Tucson’s Urban Core and we shed light on hidden gems everyone should know about. From A Mountain to the U of A and all stops in between. You get the inside track- right here on 99.1 FM, streaming on DowntownRadio.org– we’re also available on your iPhone or Android using our very own Downtown Radio app.

Reach us by email [email protected] — interact with us on Facebook @Life Along the Streetcar and follow us on Twitter @StreetcarLife

Our intro music is by Ryanhood and we exit with a song from Bryan Thomas Parker, Blackberrry Wine. We’re going to start today’s show with a little thanks, a little gratitude, and a little inspiration.

The Citizen Hotel Tucson

Our feature presentation is bringing some joy into a Tucson. We spoke with Moniqua Lane by phone just a couple of weeks ago to talk about her newest project, the Citizen Hotel Tucson. It’s the former office of the Tucson Citizen and it’s going to be another small boutique hotel in Downtown. It’s got some unique characteristics with it.

Moniqua is also the owner of the Downtown Clifton, which gained national notoriety just a few years ago and that popularity really fueled its growth and it took a fairly small establishment, expanded it, added a little restaurant and a bar, and now it’s a neighborhood watering hole as well. I enjoyed speaking with Moniqua and I hope you enjoy our interview with her as well.

Transcript

Tom Heath
Good morning. It’s a beautiful Sunday in the Old Pueblo. And you’re listening to KTDT Tucson. Thank you for spending a part of your brunch hour with us on your downtown Tucson Community sponsored rock and roll radio station.

Tom Heath
This week, we’re going to speak with Moniqua Lane. She’s the owner of the Downtown Clifton Hotel and the soon to be coming Citizen Hotel Tucson. Today is April 11th, my name is Tom Heath and you’re listening to Life along the streetcar.

Tom Heath
Each and every Sunday our focus is on social, cultural and economic impacts in a Tucson’s Urban core. We shed light on hidden gems everyone should know about. From A mountain to UArizona and all stops in between you get the inside track right here on 98.1 FM. Streaming on DowntownRadio.org, also available on your iPhone or Android. To do that you just head over to your respective stores and download the Downtown Radio Tucson application.

Tom Heath
And if you want to guess on the show or email is [email protected]. You can use that same URL lifealongthestreetcar.org to find our past episodes. You’ll see us over there on Facebook. Our podcast is available just about anywhere podcast can be found and you can simply ask your smart speaker to play “Life along the streetcar podcast.”

Tom Heath
We’re going to start today show a little thanks, a little gratitude and a little inspiration because of the University of Arizona Women’s Basketball team. They exceeded expectations. They won their region. They made it to the Final Four. In fact, they played for the national championship. I’m sure most people are aware of this news. It was a, I would say stunning achievement, they were not expected to do as well as they did. They did not ultimately win the national championship, but they brought Pride to Tucson. They played very well and If you watched the game, it was quite impressive and came right down to the very end. So thank you to coach Barnes. Thank you to the team. Thanks for bringing a little bit of excitement and joy into March and early April.

Tom Heath
Our Feature Presentation is also bringing some joy into a Tucson. We spoke with Moniqua Lane by phone just a couple of weeks ago to talk about her newest project. It’s the Citizen Hotel Tucson. It’s the former office of the Tucson Citizen and it’s going to be another small boutique hotel in Downtown. It’s got some unique characteristics with it.

Tom Heath
Moniqua is also the owner of the Downtown Clifton, which gained national notoriety just a few years ago and that popularity really fueled its growth and it took a fairly small establishment, expanded it, added a little restaurant and a bar, and now it’s a neighborhood watering hole as well. I enjoyed speaking with Moniqua and I hope you enjoy our interview with her as well.

Moniqua Lane
I’m Moniqua Lane. You asked earlier if I was busy running a law practice and I scoffed at that for a good couple of minutes because I fled the practice of law, which is how I got into real estate development, you know ran right out of the frying pan and straight into the fire. So how would I describe myself today? I just describe myself as a hotel developer, real estate developer generality, hotels I happen to enjoy I think they’re an interesting mix of business and real estate development. It’s hard to develop real estate without actually knowing the business or having a hand in the business. Not that it can’t be done. But why do anything easy when you don’t know how to do it?

Tom Heath
It was the downtown Clifton was that your first foray into that that industry?

Moniqua Lane
It was and it was entirely accidental. When I finally left the practice for good in 2013, I guess, it was my fourth attempt at leaving and my successful attempt. I’d had a bunch of people around me that had been for years saying I should get into real estate development and I wasn’t super keen on it up to all that time. And then you know, finally I was casting about for what I would do with myself as a grown adult and had just a little bit of money and hit the market at the right time and when I told my mentor in the practice of law that I was leaving, he suggested the property that became the Downtown Clifton, actually ended up buying that out of probate, so it never even hit the market, was able to purchase that property and honestly wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it.

Moniqua Lane
Where the hotel came with the 10 original rooms built in 1948. And then the giant empty lot next door and we were thinking we were going to do Townhomes or some sort of multifamily or residential deal. And in the meanwhile, we looked at each other and said well, why don’t we just turn this into a hotel?

Tom Heath
The space itself was originally a hotel was

Moniqua Lane
It it was, it was, it’s an interesting property. It has sort of a nondescript history. You know Armory Park was one of the first historic neighborhoods, first historic districts in Tucson in downtown Tucson, particularly, so its history is fairly well-documented, but for whatever reason this family exempted itself from the Historic District. There is really no record of what it did and even the business records. I went to the historical society when we purchase Property looking in the business records of the Yellow Pages for the time 1948 yields not much of anything.

Moniqua Lane
So as near as I could tell the property was operated as something called the Town Hotel for about 10 years from 48 to 50 and then just sort of disappeared from the records. We were able to pick up what was just a charming retro boutique roadside motel on the old side. We Didn’t have to do much of anything. It was gorgeous as is with its poured concrete floors with interval color and that Douglas fir those wood beams feelings. We just sort of brush them off and give everything Fresh coat of paint and some retro furniture and you know the rest went from there. We sort of did a thing on the internet and then turned it into a real hotel in real life.

Tom Heath
Yeah, the the I think the the internet that World Wide Web thing was extremely influential you got a national reputation.

Moniqua Lane
Yeah, like I said that is more luck than anything. We hit everything sort of at the right time. So that was when some Hotel, I always said desert Southwest was having a moment at that time may still post-pandemic teaching. There’s a group of hotels called The Bunkhouse hotels. I assume nobody’s going to be familiar with it outside the hotel industry, but L Cosmico is one that’s probably the most famous. The Thunderbird in Marfa the both. Those are Marfa Texas, that developer has a set of boutique hotels in the Austin Houston area as well and are often San Antonio forgives me and she her hotels had become very popular for this sort of stripped down desert look, you know Palm Springs was having a moment too, which has a very clean mid-century modern look, and the designer I worked with a guy named Cliff Taylor for whom we named the hotel actually.

Moniqua Lane
He was really sort of tapped into that feel and wanted to have Tucson sort of channel that feel itself after all. We’re also a high desert city and the building itself had these clean pretty lines. So the design aesthetic of the hotel just hit at the right time, I think sort of at the peak desire for that and I think turns out to be fairly classic. Classic look sort of those clean lines and then trying to speak to a particular place. I think makes it Timeless too, can be iconic for downtown Tucson in the way that truly Hotel Congress has been iconic. We really did follow in the footsteps of you know giants as far as they go. I’m just trying to do something special and beautiful and people really felt that.

Tom Heath
They felt it, it worked and just a couple of years ago. You took the empty lot and expanded…

Moniqua Lane
The primary thing here. I guess at that time my partner and I had split amicably so I went through the construction on my own, you know again, why do anything easy? So the challenge at that point in time was really how do you do something that is new construction that speaks to that older building, You know knew it couldn’t be recreated and you don’t want to do sort of a a Disneyland facsimile of it, you know, so you have to really speak to it. So what we try to do over here was maintain the intimacy of space that our guests had liked on the smaller property. It’s one of the things that people like it was a small space and was easy to create community. So we wanted to do that in our design. So we’ve got this interior, while it’s an outdoor Courtyard, but it’s interior to the property. So all the new rooms face onto the courtyard. You have the privacy of your room, of course, but it really is very much a community space.

Moniqua Lane
We were able to incorporate some brick. Of course it was Modern brick wasn’t that you know 40s Red burned brick. We did the concrete floors course, you can’t do integral color with radioactive dies anymore. So we weren’t able to do that pretty

Tom Heath
Darn EPA warnings…

Moniqua Lane
I mean they Really get in the way of beautiful Aesthetics…

Tom Heath
The phrase that that I’ve heard lately is modern compatible, you know something something that is taking into the style and the feel and and sort of the philosophy and the spirit but using the modern technology and material. So you’re you’re not like you’re saying trying to recreate something you’re creating something new but in the in a way that feels connected to the past.

Moniqua Lane
I know it’s a brilliant phrase and that’s what we try to do here. And if I may be so bold, I feel like we were able to succeed in doing that here. One of my favorite compliments that I get from people. I don’t get it often. I get it, you know, maybe five six times a year. Somebody will walk in and say oh, when did you renovate this old building? We wanted people to feel like this had been here. If not, as long as the original building, you know in that same era and then of course the other thing that’s so sweet to me about that is: this was such a neighborhood involved process. I live in Armory Park spent a lot of time talking to our neighbors in Barrio Viejo, the hotel looks into Barrio Viejo, spent a lot of time talking with the historic commission and Armory Park and of course with City of Tucson and and all of those people to really get something that feels appropriate and one of the sweeter compliments I got when I was done was Neighbors coming in and thinking Thanking us thanking me for feeling like I’ve done something that speaks to the place and contributes to the neighborhood in a way that is culturally and historically appropriate even though it’s new.

Tom Heath
I think people are also thanking you because you opened up a lounge right there…

Moniqua Lane
Oh boy.

Tom Heath
Yeah, like thank you for making this a school and the local beers you serve with your nice Cuisine there. So I think a lot of people don’t know about the Red Light Lounge yet. It’s sort of an up-and-coming thing here in Tucson.

Moniqua Lane
We are in the middle of a well quiet hotel in a quiet neighborhood. So we only operate from 4 to 10. We have a very limited, very small menu. We’ll have acoustic music acts play every once in a while, but our bar itself is very it’s a very small bar, very small sort of selections but has the feel of a neighborhood bar a hundred percent and that was intentional guests early on enjoy the neighborhood interaction, you know neighbors would you know walk across the street and have a beer with our general manager in our dirt parking lot and whenever guests happened to be there and we didn’t want to lose that connectivity and the lounge has been fantastic for that actually. So we probably see more neighborhood guests in the lounge than we do hotel guests, bizarrely, because what we try to do for a hotel guests as push them out into the downtown community. We’ve never wanted to you know, keep anybody on the property even to buy our alcohol and that’s been reciprocated nicely. From our neighbors who are who are here and just like you said grateful for the alcohol. There’s not much between Broadway and 22nd.

Tom Heath
And we’ll be right back to the second half and completion of our interview with Monica and just a few minutes. But first I want to remind you that you’re listening to Life along the streetcar in downtown radio 98.1 FM and available for streaming on Downtown Radio dot-org.

Tom Heath
All right, let’s get back to that interview with Monique Elaine. We heard about her history and the creation of Success of the downtown Clifton and let’s talk about the newest project coming up in just a couple of months here in downtown Tucson.

Tom Heath
Well, so things are going well to downtown Clifton and and because it’s never wise to do anything easy. You’ve just about to open another location just a few blocks away and downtown. Can you tell us a little about the project?

Moniqua Lane
Sure? Yeah, why not compete with myself. I really do enjoy building and operating and Sexualizing hotels how I ended up with one so close to me. Not sure but when a building speaks to you, it just happens to speak to you and the Old Tucson citizen building. We did I’m a Tucson native. I was a history major. So, you know the back that it had history as the first home of the amnesty the Tucson citizen. I think it’s name was like they Arizona Daily Citizen at the time just its And it’s materials and all of that just really sort of tug at my heart historically and there’s so much activity going interesting activity. I think going on there on the corners of Broadway and Stone and Congress and Stone and up and down Stone, actually.

Tom Heath
Let’s place this for folks. The Clifton is it’s on Stone but it’s about halfway. I would say between Broadway and Five Points?

Moniqua Lane
So the Clifton is that’s a good way to describe it,about halfway between Broadway and Five Points. That’s perfect. The second project, The Citizen is at 82 South Stone. So that’s a little bit north of the cathedral. We’re actually directly north of the parking garage and immediately next door to Health on Broadway.

Tom Heath
I read an article about this and this is what really prompted the call because this is not your typical. You know, I think of like a boutique hotel, I think of small rooms, but this is these these are not small rooms.

Moniqua Lane
Well, we’re not trying to do small rooms, but you know damned of competitors do to keep up with you. Every time I think I’ve done something nice like 500 square foot rooms, which were doing here just 10 of them. Somebody comes along and says, oh that’s the new industry average. I’m like damn it. I thought I was doing something special for ya and it feels that way so it really does it feels larger than your typical hotel room. There’s walk in bathroom Suite in those with walk-in closets and soaking tubs and the city views the windows are huge there lies a huge. They’re very tall Windows. The feelings were very tall. Of course in a classic sense. It varies from room to room because it’s a historic building and I know that doesn’t quite make sense. But we’re your real ceilings are and where your drop ceilings are and all that sort of stuff can be a surprise when you’re doing an Adaptive reuse in an old building.

Moniqua Lane
So on average our feelings are about Means to 12 feet and then when you go upstairs they get as high as 12 to 14 feet. I’m so so so so so excited that’s hand reckoner wines is putting their Cellar in the basement. They’ll be barrel-aging they’ll be bottling. I’ll be doing a tasting room and they’ll be shipping out of that space and doing Barrel tastings and tours and wine programming and all that sort of stuff and so since they’re based out of Ox, you know and there’s that high high open desert in the Wilcox growing area and same with Sonoita. What we wanted to do design-wise in the hotel is really speak to that experience to sort of bring not just the taste of Arizona wines, but also the feel of being out in the vineyard down to down to downtown.

Moniqua Lane
So we wanted the rooms to feel big like the big open Skies and that area and to feel bright and fun. Knee into sort of the natural materials organic materials that we do. So what we were trying to do with sand reckoner being in the basement is really speak to the terroir of the Wilcox and Sonoita growing areas and the same way that their wines do so design-wise. We wanted to have that that that feel of big open desert skies and The dusty Hughes natural wood materials Dusty greens some of the quartzite that’s out there. We’ll have those axons natural stone accents quartzite Sandstone, you know use all of those materials. There’s natural materials that give their wines for we wanted to use to give our hotel character as well. So the two will work in Harmony and that way so I’m really pleased with the size of the rooms. Not just because they’ll be big but because Speaks to the whole experience we’re trying to provide.

Tom Heath
What’s your timeline for for the renovation and opening? Do you have something slated?

Moniqua Lane
We are targeting soft open around July 1st, and we’ll use that time to walk press through to walk invited guests members of the community, even though hopefully by that time almost everybody will have, you know, two shots in their arms. We want to be sensitive to opening a hotel during During this time. So be sure to do that and carefully controlled way during the summer. We start taking reservations for room nights after August 6th. And then hopefully we can have a grand opening on October 16th. We’re planning to kick that off with what we hope will become an annual wine event. We close off the street immediately to the south of us. We’d have some wine education and tastings and music and all those sorts of things.

Tom Heath
And as you do, you pay homage to to the history and then the new hotel is is the Citizen after the the original use of that building.

Moniqua Lane
Yeah, that’s exactly it. It’s it’s formally the Citizen Hotel Tucson, but we just call it the Citizen. Keep your eyes peeled for the opening and I can’t wait to have you down and have a glass of wine.

Tom Heath
And I can’t wait to go down and have a glass of wine. Looking forward to another cool project in downtown Tucson. My name is Tom Heath. You are listening to Life along the streetcar in Downtown Radio, 99.1 FM and available for streaming on Downtown Radio dot-org.

Tom Heath
Well, we are project approaching the bottom of the hour, which means you are just a few minutes away from Ted Ski and his new show called Words and Work. I don’t know if you’ve been listening to this comes on 11:30 every Sunday Ted Ski interviews writers and others that are involved with the labor movement. It’s called words and work launched in March. We are excited to have Ted ski as part of the Sunday lineup as well as his. The DJ shows that he puts out there. If you want to know what’s coming up here on the show, we’ve got some cool things next week. We have Alan Kohler. He’s a he’s got an interesting background grew up in the midwest worked in restaurants in New York. He’s a sociopath fessor here at the University of Arizona.

Tom Heath
But his passion is in food and natural ingredients a local ingredients and he has created a company called the Arizona Baking Company. They have a couple of products that use our local Regional products and he works with Murmurs and gardeners and such in the area one of which is a collaboration with Mission Garden. So happy to have him on the show very interesting gentleman and the things you can do with baking are much more impactful to our region in our community that I would have thought.

Tom Heath
So that’ll be next Sunday with Alan Kohler and then as we move into the last week of April, we have Kate Green, who is the new director over at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) and we’ll talk a little bit about how museums are doing in the pandemic and things that you can expect to see from that interesting facility down there The Old Firehouse number one, which is now the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Tom Heath
That’s Kate Green. She’ll come up in the end of the month and that will wrap up a pretty impactful April. if there’s topics you want us to cover things that you think we should be discussing. Please don’t hesitate to reach out. And let us know our email address is contact at Life along the streetcar dot-org you can find us on Facebook. Occasionally. You’ll see as pop up on Twitter, but we spend most of our time there on social media we using Facebook and if you have a social media account tag US post something on our wall, we would like to share what you’re doing. We’re always trying to highlight things that are just under the radar and just really amazing efforts.

Tom Heath
And speaking of amazing efforts want to thank you for Arizona Gives Day. Downtown Radio set what I thought was a modest goal and they they hit it and exceeded it to us to really accomplish what we were trying to do for that fundraiser. And I want to thank you for being a part of that. As a reminder. This is an all volunteer run station. We have somewhere in the neighborhood of like 55 DJ’s our staff our board not a person gets paid for what they do here.

Tom Heath
So when you make a donation, it goes into the quality of the programming the quality of the equipment and makes a better experience for the listeners and the fact that you took some time last week to help us hit our goals met a lot.,

Tom Heath
A couple quick announcements. We had Ryan hood on the show last week a Duo that grew up here in Tucson and performs all over the world at this point. They are back in town. In fact tonight, the 11th, you can catch them as part of Out of the Tucson A Folk Festival, and if you didn’t listen last week, they’ve changed it up a little bit as far as how they’re doing the Festival this year. It’s it’s in a much safer environment. In fact Riding Hood will be playing the what they called their first Mall Concert. They’re playing at the park mall believe it’s a 4:30 tonight and they’re playing in the parking area. So you drive in there and they’ve got room for about 300 cars I believe so that’s the Tucson Folk Festival that is going on at this weekend and Ryan who is our guest last week. Be there at 4:30 tonight and they’re also playing at the Mercado this coming weekend to announce their new album, but I think that that’s that it shows might be sold out as much smaller smaller venue. Well, my name is Tom Heath and you have been listening to Life along the streetcar on downtown radio and want to invite you to head over to any one of those podcasting places like Spotify iTunes, SoundCloud Amazon. And check out our podcast or if you’ve got one of those fancy smart speakers, you can just simply say play Life along the streetcar podcast. We’ve had quite a lineup of speakers this year and invite you if this is the first time listening go back at least to the beginning of this year and look at the quality of folks that have come on to share what an amazing place that Tucson is.

Tom Heath
Our guest today was Moniqua Lane and her collaboration at the new citizen hotel, too. On with sand reckoner wines has inspired our feature song today as we head out going to leave you a little Brian Thomas Parker, blackberry wine, and this is from his 2017 album Cliffs. My name is Tom Heath. Have a great week and tune in next Sunday for more Life along the streetcar.

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Tom Heath - Senior Loan Officer with Nova Home Loans
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