from: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/centralphoenix/articles/0419sancarlos0419Z4.html
Historic hotel glitters
Angela Cara Pancrazio/The Arizona Republic
San Carlos owner Greg Melikian looks out the same window Clark Gable looked out when he studied people.
Film icons left images on history of San Carlos
Angela Cara Pancrazio
The Arizona Republic
Apr. 19, 2003 12:00 AM
With two feet planted near a star on the sidewalk engraved with the name Clark Gable, Greg Melikian greets a visitor with his well-rehearsed pitch.
You know, he says of his Hotel San Carlos, Gable often stayed here on his way to mountain lion hunting in Payson. "It was his real love."
As for actress Carole Lombard, if she were alive, she would certainly deny being upstaged by a wild animal.
According to the hotel's history, the San Carlos was where Gable and Lombard trysted before marrying.
The historic hotel has anchored the corner of Central Avenue and Monroe Street for 75 years, since March 1928. It has shimmered in the spotlight with Hollywood icons like Gable and Lombard, Cary Grant, Marilyn Monroe and Mae West.
Later, the modern world of urban renewal and suburbia nearly wiped out the elegant downtown hotel, and the landmark crumbled with unsavory guests and cockroaches.
Over time, though, the pendulum has swung back. Melikian has spent more than a $1.5 million on its restoration, and the hotel, with architecture reminiscent of the Italian Renaissance, is fitting in again as part of downtown Phoenix's own rebirth.
The Phoenix City Council has approved $300,000 in off-site public improvements and infrastructure.
"They are doing a lot to renovate that hotel," says Chris Andres, the city's project manager for Community Economic Development. "We have an investment in making downtown much more pedestrian friendly; we saw it as a mutual benefit.
"It's a significant building; it's a natural segue to accomplish a lot of redevelopment goals. It is part of the city's broader goals for a more livable downtown. It's certainly a priority."
The San Carlos and the Westward Ho are the only major historic hotels to survive downtown, says the city's chief historic preservation officer, Barbara Stocklin.
"There were several historic hotels downtown, and we don't have any left," Stocklin says.
The two hotels, she says, share the same type of reinforced concrete construction with stucco. Both were built in 1928 and are unlike the hotels built earlier that were shorter and had brick facades.
Through the decades, downtown's energy waned. Melikian, who first purchased the San Carlos in 1973, eventually sold it in 1996, to his nearly immediate regret. What a mistake that was, he says. The hotel's new owner abandoned it in 1999, and Melikian and his sons stepped up. A little more than a year ago they rescued the tarnished jewel.
"The family is back," Melikian declares.
Melikian is able to retell anecdotes he captured from former employees. It's useful when he decides to escort visitors on tours, where he weaves the old and the new.
As he leads a tour, he shows off his restoration efforts as if he were Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune.
Inside one of the suites, Melikian caresses the wood veneer of a new armoire,
"This is one of our masterpieces," he says.
He opens each door to the bulky piece of furniture. One door reveals a coffee and wet bar, the others open up to a microwave, refrigerator and TV.
There are a few rooms next on his list for a face lift, like Clark Gable's old room on the fourth floor. Melikian believes Gable was the most intriguing guest to have stayed here.
"He would sit in the corner on a chair," Melikian says, "he would observe people walking, studying their gestures."
Melikian glances out that same window. In Gable's mind, no one would see him - except for room service personnel who lived to tell the tale of Gable sharpening his craft, four floors above Central and Monroe where, now, both the high-heeled and the shoeless step on his star.