As Tucson celebrates the 90th anniversary of its rodeo, plans are afoot to demolish the home of Frederick Leighton Kramer, the polo enthusiast who dreamed up the notion of La Fiesta de los Vaqueros with a few of his horse-riding buddies in 1925.
Kramer’s home, built in 1924, was situated on a large plot just north of where Isabella Greenway would build the Arizona Inn in 1930.
The first rodeo was held on a polo field near Kramer’s home.
The house, a two-story marvel with green porcelain roofing tiles, was “easily the largest and most pretentious of Tucson’s private residences,” according to a 1925 Tucson Citizen story unearthed by John Warnock, a University of Arizona English professor who lives nearby.
Kramer died of tuberculosis in 1940.
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In the 1940s, the house, dubbed Rancho Santa Catalina by Kramer, became the Potter School for Girls. Most of the acreage attached to it became the Catalina Vista development, a conclave of single-story, ranch-style homes with large lots on winding tree-lined streets.
Today, Catalina Vista, north of East Elm Street between North Campbell Avenue and North Tucson Boulevard, is a National Historic Neighborhood, although the Kramer/Potter house itself is not listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The house and its adjacent buildings would later become a convent and school for the Sisters of Charity. It was sold to John Greenway, then owner of the Arizona Inn, in 1971.
For a while, it was a residential compound and studios for graduate art students from the UA.
It has been fenced and boarded up since 2006. The owners of the Arizona Inn have signed a contract to sell it and its 3-acre parcel to a group of local developers.
One of the investors, Tucson attorney Bob Gugino, said the plan is to demolish the house and build 13 one-story homes of 2,200 and 3,200 square feet, with estimated sales prices of $600,000 and $800,000.
Local historian Ken Scoville said he’d like to see the house renovated and adapted to another use, perhaps as lawyers’ offices like some of the buildings in the city’s downtown Snob Hollow district.
Warnock said he’d like to see the lush foliage on the three acres turned into a park. The home is surrounded by towering aleppo pines and palms and is screened from view by a 20-foot tall hedge of oleander.
Warnock said it’s home to a variety of fauna, including raptors, coyotes and the occasional bobcat or raccoon.
Gugino said his group plans to preserve as much of the mature vegetation as possible, but noted that some of the pines are beetle-infested.
He wants the development to fit into the neighborhood, he said, and plans to live in one of the homes himself.
As for rehabbing the house: “It’s a noble suggestion,” said Gugino.
“That could easily be a $2 million-plus restoration. It makes no economic sense to do that.”
Gugino said he is hoping to create a little subdivision that fits with the neighborhood.
The house is in fairly dismal condition.
The green porcelain roofing tiles are still in place and gorgeous, but the beams holding them up are termite-ridden and rotted.
Inside, the plaster is falling off the lath on the ceilings and walls and the many “improvements” made over the years — asbestos ceiling tiles and fluorescent fixtures — rob the home of the grandeur it once had.
City Councilman Steve Kozachik said he is working with the developers and neighbors to try to reach as good a deal as possible.
The city has no leverage on the project. The parcel is not protected by any city historic ordinance and has the required zoning (R-2) for 13 homes.
Catalina Vista is a federal historic district, but a demolition permit has already been issued and the only requirement is documentation of the home’s original configuration and its history.
“They can do exactly what they are proposing to do without asking anybody any favors, any variances. They’ve got by right the ability to do exactly what they are proposing to do,” Kozachik said.
It could be a good development, said Kozachik, if it sensitively blends into the neighborhood of grand old homes and the iconic Arizona Inn.
“Frankly, from the point of view of infill development, Tucson doesn’t have anything like this, setting aside historic preservation,” he said.
He said the homes would be attractive to physicians and executives arriving with the takeover of nearby University Medical Center by Banner Health.
Kozachik hosted a tour of the property for nearby residents and neighborhood association leaders last week.
Warnock said he understands the dilemma. He himself lives in a townhome that was built on the site of another historic villa that had been torn down.
For years after moving in, he said, his nearest neighbors shunned him.
He’d like somebody to step up with money for a park on the site.
Kozachik said he knew the sale and plans would be controversial, even if there was nothing to be done about it.
He said the developers are amenable to working with the neighbors and that the Arizona Inn owners had shopped the property quietly, through attorney Larry Hecker, looking for someone with the sensitivity to pull it off.
For Scoville, it’s an old story.
“What could be more delicious Tucson irony than that we’re planning for demolition of this home during rodeo week?” he said.
Scoville, a teacher and amateur historian who leads tours of downtown Tucson historic sites, said “the only way we begin to appreciate and understand our past is if we can see it. I just gotta believe there is some adaptive use for it.”
Will Conroy, the great-grandson of Isabella Greenway King, said in a statement that the sale of the property is part of his family’s attempt to continue to preserve the history of the neighborhood, in particular the Inn.
In the recent economic downturn, he wrote, “to my eye the Arizona Inn has never compromised the hotel’s high standards of service or signature sense of quiet civility.”
It has, however, been forced to defer “necessary work we absolutely need to do on our beautiful buildings and ground here.”
Sale of the Kramer property is part of the solution.
He said he asked Hecker, who represents the Inn, to “put the word out to those few good local builders and developers we felt might best understand and value our neighborhood and would propose appropriate, viable, high-quality ways forward for the property in question.”
Hecker, on a tour of the property Friday, said Gugino’s group promised to honor that vision.
He said he expects controversy, but hopes the new subdivision will ultimately be accepted by its neighbors.
Contact reporter Tom Beal at tbeal@tucson.com or 573-4158.