New Boulder hotel now plans winter start

Staff Writer BOULDER – Groundbreaking on the long-awaited 200-room St. Julien Hotel at Canyon Boulevard and Ninth Street in Boulder has been postponed again. Now, its developer hopes to break ground by this winter and be open by the summer of 2003.

Bruce Porcelli, managing partner of St. Julien Partners, developer of the hotel, had hoped to break ground in late summer, but the six-year wait to get started continues to get longer.

Porcelli said delays are due to the public-private nature of the project, which includes a parking garage he will jointly own with the city and a civic-use building owned by a pair of non-profits that will include a dance and music studio and a children’s museum.

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“It’s a long, complicated process,´ said Tom Eldridge, a Boulder city council member. Many last-minute details, such as where the sewer line will come from, still are being worked out, he said.

City council approved the hotel project last year, and Porcelli is just now preparing to apply for a building permit. After receiving a permit, Porcelli said he could secure funding for the project, which is expected to cost about $40 million. “I have financing lined up in the forms of debt and equity,” he said. “I will not get final commitments until things are signed by the city.”

Porcelli said the sluggish economy has not affected investors’ commitments to the hotel. “The people we deal with acknowledge that when we open we will be in a different economy,” he said. Most of the financing is coming from national banks through local branches, he said.

Porcelli has been working with a contractor for a year, but he has yet to sign a contract, adding he expects to do so by the end of the month.

Patrick Hallman, vice president of Hospitality Real Estate Counselors, said while many developers are putting off hotel projects to see if occupancy rates return to pre-Sept. 11 numbers, the market should have recovered by the time the St. Julien opens in 2003. “Most people are saying the recession will only last through 2002, and in 2003 we will start to see demand growth,” he said. “That’s an ideal situation to be in.”

The fact that the two Marriotts going up near the intersection of Hover Road and Highway 119 broke ground recently is a good indication that the hotel market is fairly strong in the Boulder County area, Hallman added.

The private-public partnership takes the form of The Ninth and Canyon Hotel and Garage Condominium Association, formed by St. Julien Partners and Boulder’s Central Area General Improvement District (CAGID), a taxing district. Under a condominium declaration, a legal document that creates a condominium, St. Julien Partners will own the hotel as a condo unit, and CAGID will own the parking garage and 556 spaces, and St Julien will own 100 spaces, as a condo unit.

Porcelli said he owns approximately two-thirds of the 2.7-acre lot, and CAGID owns the rest.

CAGID is preparing to apply for a building permit and has been authorized by the city to sell $12.5 million in bonds to pay for construction of the parking structure. The bonds would be repaid by parking revenues and tax increment revenues from the hotel, said Molly Winter, director of the downtown and University Hill management division and parking services. CAGID plans the bond sale for this January, she said.

Another portion of the project will be a three-story civic-use building that will house a children’s museum and a dance and music studio. Earlier this month, the Boulder Planning Board approved the building by a 6-to-1 vote. Collage, which will run the children’s museum, and the Village Arts Coalition, which will oversee the dance studio, will jointly pay for construction of the 38,000-square-foot building, plus pay a nominal lease to the condominium association for the land it sits on. Ownership of the building goes to St. Julien Partners whenever its civic use is discontinued.

Because this civic-use building will be over the parking garage, the garage needs to be constructed before the building can be erected, said Ingvar Sedal, a member of the Village Arts Coalition’s building committee. He expects construction of the building to begin a year after the groundbreaking for the garage and to be completed eight months to a year after that.

The Village Arts Coalition, an umbrella of 33 art organizations, is planning to use the second and third stories of the building as dance studios for participatory art, such as music, dancing and other related activities, Sedal said. The studios will be available to the community to rent out for uses such as dance lessons, recreational dancing, yoga classes and exercise classes, he said.

Collage, which already has a children’s museum on 30th Street between Walnut and Pearl streets, plans a children’s museum and family learning and discovery center on the first and second floors of the building, said Leslie Durgin, executive director of Collage. The museum will feature activities for infants through high school students, she said.

The museum will feature several permanent and traveling exhibits, Durgin said. “We are planning to partner with a bunch of organizations in Boulder County to offer programs and exhibits to kids,” she said.

The children’s museum also will offer a variety of workshops, artist studio exhibits and a children’s theater, Durgin added.

Phil Shull, chairman of the Boulder Urban Renewal Authority (BURA) and president of Boulder-based Deneuve Construction, said the hotel, garage and civic building are within BURA’s territory and required approval from that agency. “BURA approved the project, so that little square on the dance card has been checked off,” he said, adding, “It’s in the pipeline. It’s happening.”

If the project is completed, Shull said it would enhance the downtown area. “It will be seen as something that should have happened 10 years ago,” he said.

Although the St. Julien project is moving forward, another county hotel project has been temporarily put on hold because of the economy.

Scott Coburn, who is planning a three-story, 68-room Black Diamond Hotel on the southwest corner of U.S. Highway 287 and Diamond Circle, one-half mile north of Baseline Road in Lafayette, said he has moved his target opening date from Halloween of this year to the spring of 2002.

“I am trying to work on financing, which has gotten difficult,” he said. The hotel, which gets its name from the Black Diamond Center and is planned to include a continental breakfast area and indoor and outdoor swimming pools, is estimated to cost $5 million, including land, the building and furnishings, Coburn said.Contact Amy Stogner at (303) 440-4950 or e-mail astogner@bcbr.com.