To remember Zahn’s department store is to recall a different Racine, Wisc. First built in 1925, it wasn’t just the cornerstone of Monument Square, it was a hub for commerce and community across generations of this bustling industrial town on the shore of Lake Michigan.
No different than other retail stores, it began to face stiff competition and by the 1960s business drastically declined.
In 1982, Zahn’s closed its doors for good. Decades after, it had stood as a relic, frozen in time, a reminder of the halcyon years of Racine, but also its commercial decline. Imagine, then, the shock and awe for Racine natives, young and old, when they behold what Zahn’s has now become, a boutique hotel called Hotel Verdant—a conversion project that has taken the city and the broader U.S. by storm.
The city’s first boutique is a vision of its potential future, a stylish rebirth blending the past with a futuristic array of green and sustainable technology. With LEED-Gold certification expected soon, it might be the “greenest” hotel in all the Midwest, said Dominion Properties Founder and Chairman Mike O’Connor, who served as co-lead on Hotel Verdant. “We’re a green company doing green things in this hotel,” said O’Connor.
“We wanted to create a really unique gathering space for the community and businesses and have all the usual things you would want to have in a hotel. But as developers, we’ve done LEED Platinum projects before, and we wanted to make a hotel that was also sustainable.”
MULTIFAM TO HOTELS
This is the first hotel from Dominion, a longtime Milwaukee apartment developer, and sustainability was a core tenet guiding the design. The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) designation is more than just a rating. Beyond generating its own electricity— and reducing Hotel Verdant’s power bill—it symbolizes a commitment to sustainability as a practice. Even the name, Hotel Verdant, is a nod to environmentalism.
Dominion Properties has built LEED-Platinum certified apartment complexes before and O’Connor understands the apprehension of designing green tech-heavy projects. “But when you get a calculator out and start doing the math, then people start to get it,” he said.
What made the installation of all this green tech so smooth was acquiring a vacant lot to the south of the Zahn’s building. Before a four-floor addition was built, geothermal wells were sunk 500 feet below to connect to the heat pump HVAC system. On the ground floor, hidden out of sight, are electric transfers and generators. For the eco-minded guest, 10 free charging stations are available for electric vehicles.
But perhaps most impressive is what’s on the roof—a range of solar panels add extra kilowatts to the electrical grid.
“It’s the only commercial solar-panel roof you can see without getting into a hard hat,” said Mike Cornell, CIO of ArchSolar, who helped install the bifacial solar panels and used a “green roof” of a specialized grass to hold it in place. Besides helping to meet permit requirements of withstanding 90-mile-per-hour winds, it recycles rainwater and never needs to be trimmed. When heavy Midwest winters blanket it with snow, the two-sided panels will melt it in a matter of hours.
Visible from the rooftop bar Eave, Cornell said he plans to take prospective clients up there to demonstrate ArchSolar’s capabilities. “This is probably the best solar classroom I could ever imagine.”
NEW SENSATION
Incorporating new technology into the old building was the first challenge. Maintaining the historical aesthetic was an entirely different one. To recoup 40% of the renovation cost in tax credits, Hotel Verdant had to abide by the stringent guidelines of the National Park Service and the State Historic Preservation Office. This meant adding features that resembled the original Zahn’s department store, from the choice of flooring to window styles to matching bricks on the exterior.
When Kubala Washatko Architects began work on the property, it had been gutted from a failed attempt at a children’s museum in the 1990s. With few blueprints and only a handful of historic photographs to guide them, they had to model their designs on the original space, incorporating aspects of the old department store—coffered drywall ceilings, plaster columns and tiled floors—for an experience at once familiar and modern.
“I always joke that when you start a historic restoration, it’s like a 500-piece puzzle and you only have 200 of the pieces,” said Vince Micha, partner at Kubala Washatko Architects. The firm had worked on both historic renovations and hotels before and knew both projects had to be developed in unison for it to truly work. They were up for the challenge.
“It’s something that we love doing, to save a historic building from being demolished and letting it continue to contribute to the community in a meaningful way,” said Micha.
One of the biggest issues was softening the echoes arising from the plaster ceilings and concrete floors. Kubala Washatko used acoustic scrims to muffle the sound, then blanketed it with live indoor plants to conceal them. In the ground floor restaurant Marguerite, a wall of shrubbery—one of countless pieces of real greenery throughout the hotel—provides fresh oxygen, as well as aesthetic beauty. Those were one of many ideas from Dominion Properties’ CTO, Christopher Adams, a Racine native and engineer.
Adams was critical to Hotel Verdant’s clean, chemically neutral design, emphasizing zero VOCs (volatile organic compounds) in every aspect of construction and decoration. Micha recalled an instance where Adams detected the wrong carpet glue just by its smell.
“Christopher did a very careful job of making sure that when we selected any interior finishes, that it had as close to zero VOCs as we could get, even all of the cleaning products and personal hygiene products for guests,” said Micha. “That just speaks to the building’s incredible indoor air qualities.”
Working in collaboration with interior designers The Gettys Group to recapture the original atmosphere with modernist touches, the hotel was built in the Danish “hygge” style, favoring minimalist touches and simplified furniture to create a cozy conviviality without overdoing it.
Likewise, the guest rooms feature several residence-style features to make the place more inviting, most notably the apartment-like suites that can be rented out individually or connected by a private hallway.
A partnership with the Racine Art Museum has pieces from local artists adorning Hotel Verdant’s walls, while a freestanding fireplace in the lobby—double-paneled with glass so it’s always cool to the touch—embodies the space’s long-awaited return to the community.
“The concept of ‘The Living Room of Racine’ was the driving design for all of the areas we took,” said Gettys Group interior designer Renata Borro. “We really have a vision of this place as very welcoming and inviting, but also looking toward the future, and what the city is going to become.”
Story contributed by Derek Herscovici.