The 122-year-old Mesa's last standing historic hotel Alhambra will be converted into student housing by early next year. The hotel on Macdonald south of Main Street will be restored and renovated to accommodate around 60 Benedictine University students once workers complete a $3.5 million overhaul.

The Benedictine University spokesman Elliott Peppers said that, "We will begin marketing the project to our students within the next couple of weeks but already, (we) are receiving inquiries from students as to the opening." "We have a number of students who are residing in and around Mesa in apartments who are very interested in university housing options."

The initiative was described as an "ideal" solution by the campus executive officer Charlie Gregory to allow students to live within a mile of campus while "keeping some of the old Alhambra Hotel history alive.”

The run-down building was bought for about $1 million by the Phoenix-based developer Venue Projects and California-based Community Development Partners during last month.

Lorenzo Perez, Venue Projects principal, said that, "Then, I remembered (city) Downtown Vision Committee meetings where students were saying, 'We don't have anywhere to study late at night,' or, 'It sure would be nice to live near campus and have a place to rest during the day.’ "

"I reached out to Benedictine, and they said they had a need for housing in a very big way," Perez said Vic Linoff of the Mesa Preservation Foundation, said that, " The Alhambra had a rough life."  "For many years, people have tried to buy that building and put it to a higher and better use, but they were never able to do it because it could be run so inexpensively as is."

"When we walked through, they had definitely modified it, and not in a great way. But the old hotel rooms and doors were all pretty much there, and you could see that removing certain walls could make the building intensely charming," Perez said.

"We look for buildings with good bones, and we loved the character of it."

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Nandini