The Hotel Chisca historic rehabilitation is an incredible turnaround story illustrating how good design can transform a decades long derelict structure encompassing an entire city block into the missing link between a thriving arts district and the downtown core.
Abandoned for three decades, Hotel Chisca had served as a physical and psychological barrier between two flourishing downtown communities, condemned as part of blight remediation.
When commissioned in 2011 to evaluate the feasibility of rehabilitation, the design team found a building in steep decline. The basement held three feet of stagnant water causing areas of structural failure. The ballroom featured ponding water that had literally become a dangerous wetland, complete with water fowl and a 25-foot waterfall, tenuously supporting a failing roof structure. The penthouse roof structure, had collapsed, and the developer believed the 1961 motor lodge addition should be demolished in favor of a surface parking lot.
The design team recognized that realizing the project’s restorative community value would require balancing the building’s historic character with budget conscious design. The focus began with repositioning the former barrier into an asset that blended the thriving arts district and the downtown core. This city-building focus also progressed into a reanalysis of the developer’s desire to remove the 1961 addition and a focus on creating an amenity laden environment that embraced the historic hotel functions.
One-hundred-sixty-one apartments, two restaurants, and amenity areas have transformed the site into a 100-percent occupied, market-leading historic rehabilitation project. The most dramatic, yet simple design strokes consisted of surgically extracting the ballroom ruins to create an urban rooftop oasis and the elegant transformation of the maligned mid-century modern addition into an effective market catalyst - all within the National Park Service’s Historic Tax Credit guidelines.
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