Company aims to renovate Hotel Monroe by 2015 Super Bowl
May 9, 2014, 5:00 AM | Updated: 5:00 am
PHOENIX — The long vacant Hotel Monroe will soon be living up to its name as a hotel as the building’s new owners anticipate a massive renovation project to be completed just in time for next year’s Super Bowl.
The Hotel Monroe has sat vacant for years on Monroe Avenue between Central Avenue and First Street and was recently purchased by CSM Corp., with the goal of turning the building into a Hilton Garden Inn.
Kate Burda, vice president of sales and marketing for CSM Corp., said they decided the Hilton Garden Inn brand would be a good fit for the 1930s art-deco building.
“(It’s) more extravagant than your mid-priced hotels, but yet still deliver a price that is attractive to travelers coming in,”
CSM Corp. will spend about $40 million to renovate the building, but Burda said the company seeks to keep the same historic aesthetic while still offering a hotel up to date with modern standards.
“Bringing forward that historic feel (that) you’re in a historic place, yet having a very design forward feel to it,” said Burda.
A previous attempt to make what was originally the Professional Building, which housed Valley National Bank for many years, into a hotel failed when the lending company Mortgages Ltd. went out of business in 2008.