South Dakota firm proposes Holiday Inn Express for Diagonal site

BOULDER — Plans for a new Kum & Go gas station along the Diagonal Highway in Boulder’s northeast corner have come and gone.

Lamont Cos. Inc. — a hotel development, construction and management firm based in Aberdeen, S.D. — last week submitted plans for concept review with the city of Boulder for a 120-room Holiday Inn Express at the 3365 Diagonal Highway site.

The triangular 2.3-acre site is bounded by 47th Street on the west side, Independence Road on the north side and the northbound Diagonal Highway on the southeast side. It had previously been home to a former Sinclair gas station, auto repair store and several other uses over the years.

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Iowa-based Kum & Go bought the property for $2 million in 2014, and also got plans approved with the city that year to build a 4,991-square-foot station with 10 pumps. The station was slated to include a brick, stone and metal façade that Kum & Go described at the time as being “unlike any store that Kum & Go has built to date,” after city planning staff and the planning board asked that the company think outside the box with architecture given the building’s location at one of the major gateways to the city.

On Monday, Kum & Go communications director Kristie Bell said in an emailed statement that, “It came down to cost constraints as we began to develop a store for that site that would meet our needs as well as the city’s design requirements. As those cost estimates began to firm up, we determined it wasn’t financially workable and decided to walk away from the deal.”

Kum & Go still owns the land, though is under contract to sell it.

Lamont Cos. CEO Jeff Lamont could not be reached for comment Monday.

Plans filed by Lamont with the city for the hotel are basic, but so far show a three-story hotel ringed by parking. Nathan Anderson of design firm Lightowler Johnson Associates, which is working with Lamont on the hotel, said Monday that the group is not seeking any exceptions for the site related to zoning or setbacks.

Concept reviews are a preliminary phase through which developers can gain city staff and planning board input on a project before submitting a more formal site review. City planner Elaine McLaughlin said it could be May before the hotel concept goes before planning board because of a backlog of proposed projects.

Anderson said that if the concept review goes well, the idea would be to build the hotel “right away this year.”

“But it all depends on what the city comes back with on concept plans and whether it will be feasible or not,” Anderson said.

The hotel, if built, would be the second Holiday Inn Express in Boulder. The other, at 4777 Broadway, is under different ownership.