Rustic Lake Shore Lodge built to blend with terrain

ESTES PARK – Stone and wood, the Stanger family said. The materials for their new resort hotel and conference center on Lake Estes had to be stone and wood to blend with the natural terrain. They got their wish over the Memorial Day holiday weekend when the Lake Shore Lodge opened for business, one mile east of Estes Park on Highway 34.

The Stanger family consists of the parents, Ola and Mickey Stanger, their son, Andrew Stanger and daughter Sharon Seeley, the member most active in the family business. They come from a theater background and built Lake Shore Lodge on the site where a drive-in theater they bought in 1965 had stood for decades. Previously, the family had owned theaters in Denver and Windsor in addition to their current holding, the national historic landmark Park Theater in downtown Estes Park.

When the Stanger family was offered a healthy sum for 45 acres they owned in Broomfield next to the Omni Hotel, they sold the land and decided the time was right to realize their dream of building a high-quality, rustic-style lodge in keeping with the ambiance of the Estes valley.

“We didn’t want the lodge to be obtrusive. My father loves logs, so it had to be built with logs, and we wanted it to reflect the look of the granite around Estes Park,” Seeley said.

Native Colorado logs weren’t big enough to support the structure they wanted to build and using native stone was cost-prohibitive, so they bought logs from Montana, some more than three feet in diameter, and went with artificial stone from a California company to create the lodge’s sturdy, log and granitelike architecture.

Construction costs were more than $10 million or about $175,000 per room. By comparison, the Helmsley Hotel in New York was built at a cost of $200,000 per room, according to Bob Horner, general manager of the Lake Shore Lodge.

The AAA three-star lodge and conference center was designed to accommodate a varied clientele: business meetings of up to 200-300 people; every type of reunion from family to alumni; small weddings and large ceremonies for which guests can reserve the entire hotel; and individuals, couples and families.

Open all year, the three-story lodge has 48 guest rooms and six suites with mountain and lake views. All the suites have fireplaces (some have two), and two have Jacuzzis. All the rooms feature modem and Internet access, closet safes for valuables, irons and ironing boards, refrigerators, satellite television, coffee makers and built-in hair dryers.

The Silverado restaurant and OK Corral bar are lakeside with a capacity of 100. A mezzanine lounge area, also on the lake, holds 55 people and is perfect for cocktail parties, luncheons and smaller banquets and get-togethers. The mezzanine also can be used as a holding area where conference attendees can relax while meeting rooms downstairs are converted for dining and after-dinner speakers. Executive Chef John Bunting, formerly of the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver, caters the banquets and prepares the food for the dining room and bar.

“My favorite place at the lodge is the OK Corral because it feels so rustic and has fabulous views,” Seeley said.

An abundance of recreation onsite, close-by and in the region is available for guests of the lodge and conference center. At garden level facing Lake Estes, the lodge sports a fitness room with indoor swimming pool, hot tub, sauna, exercise and weight machines and a game room. An outdoor patio completes the space with copious lounge chairs for sun worshippers.

Next door to the hotel, the Lake Estes Marina offers fishing, boating and biking rentals. Anyone, however, can bring their own equipment and fish from the bank of Lake Estes and walk or bike the four miles around the lake. A nine-hole golf course is walking distance from Lake Shore Lodge.

At the Stanger’s other property, Aspen Lodge, a few miles southwest of the Lake Shore Lodge on Highway 7, other activities are available, including horseback riding, tennis, hiking, volleyball, mountain biking, hay rides, group barbecues and a ropes course like those used for leadership training. Winter activities include ice skating, ice hockey and cross-country skiing.

And then there’s always the town of Estes Park for shopping, galleries, miniature golf and gondola rides. Rocky Mountain National Park is right up the pass on Highway 34, west of the lodge.

In addition to the Lake Shore Lodge and Conference Center and the Aspen Lodge, the Stanger family owns the Best Western motel at Lake Estes, just north of the Lake Shore Lodge. All their businesses are combined under the parent company, Estes Valley Resorts.

“That was our soft opening,” Bob Horner, manager of the lodge, said. “The Stanger’s company, Estes Valley Resorts, had the grand opening the fourth of July.”

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