Tucson’s venerable Arizona Inn makes room for new ownership

A Tucson investment group includes noted ex-UA basketball player Steve Kerr announced the purchase of the historic Arizona Inn this week.

Known for its bright pink exterior, the Arizona Inn opened in December
1930 and was owned and operated by the family of the inn’s founder,
Isabella Greenway, Arizona’s first congresswoman, for nearly a century. The celebrated 14-acre property, tucked into a quiet Midtown Tucson neighborhood near the University of Arizona, had been put up for sale in March.

The hotel was purchased this week by the Arizona Inn Management Group, which includes Steve and Margot Kerr, Greg and Marla Amado, Jim and Kerrin Berwick, Phil and Mimi Amos, Kirk Saunders and Ann Peterson, and Brian and Shamra
Strange. 

“Our families all have deep connections to the inn, just as so many generations of Tucsonans do,” the new owners said in a published statement. They described themselves as “custodians of a Tucson treasure.” 

“The Arizona Inn doesn’t need reinvention — it deserves devotion,” they said. “Our role is to preserve what makes it authentic while enhancing it for generations to come.”

“Our family is grateful that such a strong, knowledgeable, and
motivated group has come together to carry on and revitalize the
traditions of warmth and hospitality at the Arizona Inn. We’re
especially heartened by the group’s long time Tucson ties and sincere
affection for the hotel,” said former owners Patty Doar and Will Conroy, the president of the Arizona Inn.

The 93-room hotel has an assessed value of more than $5.6 million for the
land and property alone.

The new owners organized their partnership to purchase the property in June, state records show. The purchase price was not disclosed, and documents regarding the sale have not yet been publicly recorded.

Brian Strange is an experienced owner and manager of boutique hotels, and will oversee the management of the hotel through his management company S Hotel Properties, according to a press release. Strange will also lead renovations of the hotel, described as a “thoughtful refurbishment and restoration of the property.”

Guest rooms will be “refreshed with care” preserving the hotel’s traditional Spanish Colonial elegance, while “enhancing comfort and amenities for the modern traveler,” the management group said.

They said the historic bar — once the focus of praise by architect Frank Lloyd Wright as “the finest room west of the Mississippi” —  will be redone and reintroduced as Bar 1933, marking the year Isabella Greenway served as Arizona’s first congresswoman and when the inn poured its first post-Prohibition cocktail. 

“The bar will once again reclaim its place as Tucson’s most timeless gathering spot,” they said.

The inn will also update the menu, and add a spa to the Greenway House along with updates to the pool area. Meanwhile the hotel’s gardens and pink masonry walls will be preserved.

Originally, Greenway established “The Arizona Hut,” a furniture shop to employ disabled World War I veterans convalescing in Tucson. However, when the philanthropic store ran into financial trouble following 1929’s stock market crash, Greenway built the Arizona Inn to “create demand for the fine Hut furniture and thus preserve the veterans’ jobs there,” according to the hotel’s website.

“The plan worked, and original Arizona Hut furniture can be found all around the Arizona Inn to this day, maintained and cared for by the Inn’s own on-site carpentry shop,” it said.

The Arizona Inn was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.

The hotel has remained opened consistently since 1971, closing only during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Arizona Daily Star reported in April 2020.