The Leo Kent Hotel, Tucson, a Tribute Portfolio Hotel

The Leo Kent opened in May 2023 inside the lower nine floors of One South Church, the 1986 office tower that has been Tucson's tallest building for four decades under a succession of corporate names. It's the first time the building has held a hotel room; the upper floors remain leased offices. Opwest Partners' 145-room conversion, now flagged as a Marriott Tribute Portfolio property, pairs a Southwestern design language with the tower's original postmodern shell.

The place

The Leo Kent occupies the base of One South Church Avenue in downtown Tucson, a few blocks from the SunLink streetcar line, the Arizona State Museum, and the Fox Tucson Theatre. At 330 feet and 23 floors, the tower remains the tallest building in the city, giving the hotel a downtown address with more height and visibility than any other property in Tucson.

The concept

One South Church was completed in 1986 as a speculative office tower designed by Curtis Fentress of Fentress Bradburn Associates, conceived as the first of a planned twin-tower complex whose second half was never built. Over the following decades it operated purely as commercial office space under a sequence of tenant-driven names — United Bank Tower, Citibank Tower, Norwest Tower, and UniSource Energy Tower — before reverting to its street address once its longtime utility-company anchor tenant departed. It had never housed a hotel room in its history. Opwest Partners, working with Iridius Capital, converted the tower's lower nine floors into the Leo Kent, opening in May 2023 as one of the few high-rise adaptive-reuse hotel conversions completed in Arizona. The upper floors continue to operate as leased office space. The name honors developer Tyler Kent's grandfather, and the interiors lean on a Southwestern palette — local artwork referencing the Sonoran Desert, saguaros, and roadrunners — set against the tower's 1980s postmodern shell.

Dining & wellness

The hotel's restaurant, St. Cruz, is run by Tucson-native chef Devin Pinto and serves Southwestern-inspired breakfast, lunch, and dinner built around locally sourced ingredients, with an attached bar pouring regional beers, wines, and spirits; it also offers casual to-go service. Beyond the restaurant, the property keeps amenities modest: a fitness center, a garden area, and roughly 1,500 square feet of flexible meeting space. There is no pool or spa.