Nov. 9--The multimillion-dollar renovation of Santa Fe's Hotel St. Francis has been completed, virtually reinventing the 8 6 -yea r- old bu i ld i ng i n the style of an Old World monastery-turned-boutique hotel.

In a less-is-more approach, the lobby of the 82-room hotel at 210 Don Gaspar has been left uncluttered with lightcolored tumbled travertine floor tiles, stone-faced wainscoting and venetianplastered walls. A waterfilled stone basin resembling a baptismal font sits in the center of the lobby. Candles provide mood lighting at night.

"There's a calming effect when you step across the threshold. It's a pristine, almost spiritual-quality space," said Jim Long of Albuquerque-based Heritage Hotels & Resorts Inc., the hotel operator. "The burdens of the world seem to drop away when you enter."

The unlikely inspiration for the makeover is the Franciscan Order, which was founded by the hotel's namesake, St. Francis of Assissi. The result is a toneddown, rather rustic interior decor.

Rooms have wood floors, something more common at bed and breakfasts.

"We had no idea that the hotel had these wood floors until after we started (the renovation)," Long said, adding that 45 rooms now have plank floors.

The loggia -- the arcade in front of the building -- serves as a pleasant place to people watch, chat with fellow guests and kick back 22-ounce lagers from the hotel bar steps away. The dinner menu features organic produce from farms primarily in northern New Mexico. The meat and fish were farm-raised.

The hotel stayed open during the renovation, which started in early February and was largely completed in August, Long said. The exterior of the two- and three-story, 42,000-squarefoot building was not changed.

Slowly moving to bigger digs

JTC Inc., a painting and coating contractor, has purchased a five-acre industrial site in the South Valley with an eye first on an expansion there followed eventually by a relocation of all of its operations.

The property at 248 Woodward SE, next to the General Electric plant, has three industrial buildings and has been vacant for about three years. JTC's owners, Neal Meisner and Michael Dean Ford, bought it from the estate of its late owner.

"We're going to start out slow down there," Meisner said. "We're basically going to put in a state-of-the-art spray booth where we can not only spray but let it cure."

The spray "booth" will take up about one-quarter of the space in a 12,800-square-foot metal building that Meisner and Ford plan to break ground on in the next month. The building will have railtype tracks and conveyors in a step toward greater automation.

Currently in a 10,000-square-foot building on one acre at 3435 Stanford NE, between Comanche and Candelaria, JTC does painting and engineered coatings for primarily heavy-duty commercial and industrial projects. It also does epoxy flooring, vinyl wall covering -- "anything with a covering or coating," Ford said.

Employment at the 45-year-old company ranges from 25-80, depending on contracts, and is currently running at the low end of the range. "I've never seen it this bad," Meisner said about the current construction environment.

Purchase of the Woodward property and the planned improvements are a strategy to position JTC for the eventual turnaround in the economy, Meisner said. The company also has its eye on an expansion of services to heavy civil projects, such as the exposed steel in highway bridges and overpasses, and the petroleum industry.

"There's a whole new era starting out there with technology," Meisner said. "We positioning ourselves for that technical part as well."

The next phase, which has no timeline just yet, would be to relocate and expand its blasting room, where steel grit is used to prepare steel for coatings, to the new building. The existing 20,110-square-foot warehouse would be used for storage, while the 7,850-square-foot building closest to Woodward would be turned into a paint shop.

"We want to create a facility where there's only a handful like it in the country," Ford said.

The five-acre site was converted from farmland to manufacturing in the late 1940s, said Jack Dettweiler of Grubb & Ellis New Mexico, who had marketed the property at an asking price of $1,650,000. The name of the original company, Eidal Manufacturing, can still be seen from Woodward on the exterior of the old 16,184-square-foot building, which will likely be torn down.

In the 1980s, manufacturing activity ended and the property converted to warehouse uses, primarily by the GE aircraft engine plant next door.

N.M. bankruptcy update

From January through September, there were 30 bankruptcy filings for Chapter 11 business reorganizations in New Mexico, a 35 percent jump from 26 in the first nine months of 2008, according to U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Mexico.

While the jump is dramatic, the year-to-date total for 2009 is tied with 2004 as only the fourthhighest year for Chapter 11 filings going back to 2000. The big Chapter 11 years were 2001 with 52 filings (the last recession), 2002 with 44 filings and 2005 with 36 filings.

A Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing allows a business to continue operating while it works with creditors on a plan to pay off all or part of its debt. A small number of Chapter 11 cases are be filed by consumers.

The most recent national statistics cover the first six months of the year. During that period, Chapter 11 filings more than doubled nationwide from 3,907 in 2008 to 8,043 in 2009.

While Chapter 11 filings are only a symptom of the state of an economy, good or bad, New Mexico's 35 percent jump compares quite favorably to the more than doubling of filings nationwide.

Richard Metcalf covers commercial real estate for the Journal. You may reach him at 823-3972 or rmetcalf@abqjournal.com.

-----

To see more of the Albuquerque Journal, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.abqjournal.com.

Copyright (c) 2009, Albuquerque Journal, N.M.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. NYSE:GE,