Spa Luxury Fit for the Masses

By Mike Touzeau

Special to the Santa Cruz Valley Sun – Wednesday June 17, 2009

While resort spa getaways conjure up images of five-star properties with haughty, well-heeled wives mired in mud baths, rolling in rose petals, Linda Ellinor is creating a form of that fantasy in a peaceful little place for the rest of us poor slobs. Sometime in early 2010, Ellinor plans to open the new Floating Stone Inn and Aqua Spa, converted from the current Anza Inn at one of Tubac’s most treasured and historic homes. The eco-friendly garden spa will offer Inn and day guests the chance to regenerate and rehab their tired bodies and stressed out psyches for reasonable prices in private, Japanese-style hydrotherapy pools. A Southern California girl, Ellinor had property here and in Santa Rosa, and decided last year to sell out in California to concentrate on renovating and reestablishing the historic charm of 19th century silver miner and Arizona founding father Charles Poston’s 1856 home, while offering a unique relaxation opportunity to both locals and tourists. “I’m a water person,” said Ellinor, so inspired by the Ten Thousand Waves mountain resort concept near Santa Fe, New Mexico, she’s in the process of creating nine individually and uniquely decorated guest rooms in Southwest/Japanese décor that open up to courtyards with private soaking pools. Day guests will also be welcomed at flat rates for the pools, or one of a variety of soothing services available for an extra charge, like massage, sauna, yoga, health food bar, and body treatments.She plans to host weddings, conferences, reunions, and other events as well. A Japanese lap pool will be a focal point near the entrance, part of a day spa, and the six private hot pools for soaking and water massage, like the pool, will be chlorine and chemical free.All the new construction will be “green,” with solar heating, water harvesting tanks, and environmentally friendly building materials to go along with the adobe walls that were energy saving 150 years ago. One Japanese style pond will serve as a run-off to irrigate plants, many of them edible, and guests will use a shared kitchen that will help save energy. She delayed construction and provided financial support for the Arizona Archaeological Society’s efforts to preserve historic sites on her property, and helped plan a dig for them that uncovered artifacts being prepared for curation at the Arizona State Museum, for which she received an award from the Society. Ellinor expects to attract retreat teams with corporate ties as well, hoping to help them and other individuals in the business world learn how to focus more effort on sustainable living when they get back on their money-making treadmills. She knows a lot about both entities, since she heads up the growing grass roots movement in the valley toward sustainability, and she’s a child of the capitalist conclaves herself. Youthful travels took her east to New York where she used her MBA from Columbia to build a successful career in the corporate world, one day returning to her roots in California to work for the Center for Creative Leadership and co-found “The Dialogue Group” that promoted change among corporate players to get them to be more collaborative and communicative with each other. Working toward her PhD in psychology, Ellinor wrote “Dialogue: Rediscover the Transforming Power of Conversation,” a book that further promotes her belief that we must all work together to achieve a better tomorrow for our society and the planet. She continued to train facilitators and business leaders to get them to go beyond discussion toward getting things done through collaboration before settling into this latest dream of opening an oasis in the art colony. “We have always measured our prosperity in terms of profit, without concern for replenishing and regenerating,” she says, so she hopes that business people who come for a stay will get some new ideas for how to build some balance into their businesses. “Yes, you want to give them training, but you also want to give them some ‘soak time,’” she added, noting that the main purpose is to get away and relax, and that goes for anyone who always wanted to give that gift to themselves or someone else, even for just a day or a couple of hours. Call 520-398-3193 for information on the new Floating Stone Inn and Aqua Spa or to book a stay at Posada Linda or the current Anza Inn in the historic Poston House, plus there’s more information available at www.lindaellinorproperties.com.