New homes carved out of historic downtown Tucson hotel

An historic downtown Tucson hotel turned office has now been redeveloped into homes.

Local developers bought the former Glenwood Hotel, 343 S. Scott Ave. in the Armory Park Neighborhood, for $1.1 million in 2021.

“We fell in love with the building,” said Kevin Volk, one of the partners. “We didn’t know what we were going to do with it, we just knew that we loved it.”

The two-story building opened in 1908 with 31 rooms. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places “as a contributing element to Armory Park Historical District.”

“It’s so quiet and peaceful and yet so close to the downtown core,” Volk said. “It’s an unbelievable combination of being close to the action and removed from it all.”

The team decided to create homes for sale within the building.

“There’s limited for-sale product, especially downtown,” Volk said. “We’ve seen hundreds of units come online, but only for rent.”

He said the U-shaped building dictated the number and size of the homes, each with some distinctive feature of the original hotel.

One unit, for example, features the original entryway, stairs and skylight, others have original flooring, windows or doors and all have the exposed double and triple brick walls.

“Each is unique because it’s adapted from the historic building’s lines and shapes,” Volk said. “The building was speaking to us.”

Ranging in size from 950 to 2,400 square feet, the homes attracted a lot of interest and five of the six homes have already sold. The one remaining home is a two-bedroom, two-bathroom model with an asking price of $600,700, but an offer has been made.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

Prices ranged from about $550,000 to over $1 million.

The Glenwood Hotel was redeveloped in 1993 into office space, after sitting vacant for several years.

It housed the administrative offices of the Arizona Theatre Company until the sale in 2021.

Tucson attorney Douglas Levy has had his law firm two houses away from the Glenwood Property for 18 years.

He watched many prospective buyers tour the building and pass.

“I know the history of that building and it was not an easy project,” Levy said. “What Kevin undertook was massive.”

He said when neighbors learned the buyers were local, there was a sense of relief.

“Because it was the Volk family and that it has historic designation, you’re not going to find one serious person who was concerned about what was going to happen to that building,” Levy said.

Volk said he is interested in finding more opportunities to create homes for sale in vacant buildings.

“As we face the housing shortage and more and more office space emptying out, we’re going to have to figure out how to get creative,” Volk said. “It’s always going to be very complicated to convert an office building to residential but it’s something we need to understand better.

“This one was so incredibly special, we had to do it.”