By Nora Burba Trulsson 

On a blistering hot day, Heather Lennon leads a tour through seven bungalows in Phoenix’s Historic Coronado District. The empty homes, built between 1917 and the 1920s, have seen better days. Floor and roof beams sag, front windows are boarded up, and anything metal — including copper piping and air conditioners — has long since been stripped away by enterprising thieves. Despite the stifling heat, Lennon’s enthusiasm is palpable, as she points out details such as fireplaces surrounded by built-in bookcases, French doors, a cellar, and vintage kitchen sinks. “A building will speak to you if you listen,” she says.

Set on a little more than an acre just north of downtown’s Banner University Medical Center, the vintage bungalows, with their garages and sheds, spoke to Lennon so much that she created Imagine Coronado, a planned wellness enclave that will repurpose the bungalows into boutique overnight accommodations with an emphasis on everything from massage and meditation to yoga classes and breath work. The rest of the property will focus on community connections, with possibilities such as gathering places, a healing garden, and perhaps a bar space or coffee shop. “Everything is fluid now,” Lennon explains. “We’ve cleaned up the property and stabilized the houses, but we are listening to what the community wants before we start construction.”

This isn’t Lennon’s first rodeo with historic buildings. But her path to adaptive reuse, not to mention becoming a general contractor and developer, started traditionally. A University of Arizona alum, Lennon earned a master’s degree focusing in retail store design and consumer behavior. She launched her own design firm with a retail emphasis in 1998, devising everything from luggage stores and dental offices to art galleries and coffee shops. Responding to clients’ needs, Lennon became a licensed general contractor in 2000, then ventured into development several years ago. Through her work, she became enamored with old buildings. “I love adaptive reuse,” she says. “I found that ‘ground-up’ building is very rote.”

One of Lennon’s first development projects was a warehouse and auxiliary building in the Warehouse District of Phoenix, which she transformed into an event space and catering kitchen. “You don’t just save a building by restoring it,” she says, summing up her development philosophy. “You have to ask, ‘What is this historic building going to be?’ You save it by putting it back into use by the community and creating jobs with it.”

The Coronado property crossed Lennon’s radar last year while it was under contract for a high-density apartment development that ultimately fell through. Lennon was brought in to assess rehabilitating and preserving the block-long grouping of historic structures, which had been saved from demolition through the efforts of the neighborhood and Phoenix Councilwoman Laura Pastor. “The neighborhood and Councilwoman Pastor fought to save these homes,” Lennon says. “I want to honor that.”

The houses had been rental homes that had long since been unoccupied, and the property’s zoning had been changed from single-family residential to include a 38-foot commercial strip along the rear of the site. Originally incorporated into the apartment project, the commercial zoning gives Lennon the flexibility to consider local businesses.

To support the project, Imagine Coronado received $500,000 from the City of Phoenix Phil Gordon Threatened Building Fund Grant Program, which assists property owners with the rehabilitation of threatened historic buildings.

In the meantime, Lennon and her team have set up an office in the one home that could be occupied and are diligently tackling Imagine Coronado, securing the site and using a green approach to the project. “We deconstruct, not demolish,” she says. The strategies include recycling and repurposing salvaged building materials — not only those found on site, but also materials from a local building supply company with whom Lennon has partnered. Lennon points out that during the site cleanup alone, Imagine Coronado recycled 11,000 pounds of concrete.

In the next few months, Lennon will be considering designs for everything from floor plans to landscaping and seeking collaborators for the vision. “We are amplifying what exists here, not changing it completely,” she notes. “We are part of a rung in the evolution of downtown Phoenix. Imagine Coronado will have a ripple effect.”