Embassy Suites finally going up at the Ranch

LOVELAND – With its steel skeleton slowly rising from the ground, the new Embassy Suites-Loveland Hotel and Spa is beginning to take shape on The Ranch, the Larimer County fairgrounds complex east of Interstate 25 in Loveland.

When finished in March 2009, the eight-story, $60 million facility will have 263 rooms and about 80,000 square feet of convention space.

The hotel is being developed by Springfield, Mo.-based John Q. Hammons Hotels and Resorts. Company founder John Q. Hammons, 88, visited The Ranch last summer for the groundbreaking for the facility, the 198th that the hotel-building icon will have constructed across America since the company was founded in 1958.

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The Loveland Embassy Suites project was first announced in early 2003 with an estimated completion date of 2006. That project was to have been built on Hammons-owned land on the west side of I-25, but plans later changed to build the hotel on the same side of the interstate as The Ranch.

But by mid-2006, relations between Hammons and the county hit a snag and it appeared that the project would be canceled and the county would seek another hotel builder for the site. However, the two parties were eventually able to resolve their differences and the Embassy Suites project broke ground in July 2007.

The new hotel is being built on a 20-acre site leased from Larimer County. The 55-year lease is expected to bring in about $65 million to the county over the life of the lease agreement, according to County Manager Frank Lancaster.

Bob Herrfeldtt, who was named director of The Ranch last year to replace departing Jay Hardy, said the completed hotel – just across the parking lot from the Budweiser Events Center – will add another dimension to the fairgrounds complex.

“It’s just going to be huge for us and open up a ton of doors,” Herrfeldtt said. “Last week, we hosted the Range Beef Symposium and we had probably 800 men from four states in to attend this event. If we had a hotel over there, I think every room would have been sold out. Those are the kinds of things we’d like to be able to accommodate.”

Herrfeldtt said the fairgrounds, which opened in September 2003, has become more of an “events-conference center,” with about 2,000 separate events held there each year. He said the addition of an upscale hotel nearby will create even more event opportunities for The Ranch to cash in on.

“We are busy as busy can get, but we could then advertise our business plan to larger conferences,” he said. “We’d love to have 260 rooms right across our parking lot so people can cruise right over to our conference center.”

The Ranch is a 240-acre site, with 120 acres serving as the center of the fairgrounds complex. Another 60 acres lie to the north of the complex, which Herrfeldtt said has not yet been designated for development. The other 60 acres lie south of The Ranch, with the Embassy Suites occupying about half of that piece.

Herrfeldtt said the remaining 30 to 40 acres to the east of the hotel will be developed to fit in with the hotel and with Peakview development, a mixed-use project being constructed by Windsor developer Martin Lind just south of Crossroads Boulevard.

The John Q. Hammons Hotels and Resorts Web site describes the Embassy Suites project as an “upscale hotel, spa and convention center” with a “luxurious atrium and water feature,” a fitness center, indoor pool, sundeck and “therapeutic spa treatments at the full-service Spa Botanica, John Q. Hammons’ signature spa.”