Region’s overnight sensation has new hotels checking in

“We really do need the extra rooms.”

Nancy Rezac, executive director of Visit Longmont, puts it bluntly. If today’s crop of hotels and motels in the Boulder Valley and Northern Colorado still had old-fashioned “No Vacancy” signs, they’d be as common in summer as out-of-state license plates.

“We’re usually on a sold-out basis from the first of June through August,” she said. “In the fringe market, the shoulder market either side” – meaning spring and fall – “there are weekends that are sold out,” Rezac said. “Then from December through January and February, it’s pretty light here. But during the busy months, we need more rooms.”

SPONSORED CONTENT

People Powered: Preparing Longmont Businesses for Economic Success

Longmont Chamber and FNBO present People Powered on April 24, 2024, aiming to inform business owners about workforce development, housing, and transportation issues.

The market is responding, with nearly two dozen projects in various stages of development adding accommodations that run the gamut from budget rooms to family- and business-oriented lodging and extended-stay suites, a hotel with an indoor water park – and maybe even a luxury destination resort.

Rezac’s plea for more lodging choices is echoed by officials throughout the region.

“Our usage rates are some of the highest in the state,” said Annette Gilbert, business services coordinator for the city of Loveland. That city led the region in September with an 84.8 percent occupancy rate, according to the Rocky Mountain Lodging Report from the Colorado Hotel and Lodging Association.

Hotels along the U.S. Highway 36 corridor for September saw 81 percent occupancy, followed by Estes Park at 82.2 percent; Boulder at 79.7 percent, and Fort Collins and Greeley at 72 percent. Fort Collins reported 81.2 percent occupancy in July.

Amy Mayhew, manager of the CHLA, isn’t surprised by the new surge in hotel construction in Northern Colorado. “It’s just been an underserved area,” she said.

New life for downtowns

“Given the fact that Colorado is experiencing robust growth in a variety of sectors, not only is there a demand for quality office development, but also in the hotel and hospitality sector,” said Dovetail Solutions founder Andy Boian, who is directing the marketing of a planned five-story, 162-room hotel at 354 Walnut St. in Old Town Fort Collins for the Bohemian Cos., McWhinney and Sage Hospitality.

“We look forward to satisfying some of that demand,” he said. “It’s a pretty unique site – something that I think, given Fort Collins’ continued robust growth, it’s the right time for a hotel like this to take advantage of such a unique opportunity.”

Bohemian is partnering with McWhinney Inc. of Loveland to develop the project, while Denver-based Sage, which manages the Crawford Hotel at the recently renovated Denver Union Station, will operate it. Construction is likely to begin in January on the former site of a church and an Armadillo restaurant. Opening is expected in 2017,

Greeley, too, is looking forward to a hotel and convention center to bring new life to its downtown core. City officials and Hensel Phelps Construction are actively pursuing the project on a city-owned parcel at 919 Seventh St. The city would like a hotel of approximately 150,000 square feet and 150 to 200 rooms with about 5,000 square feet of conference space.

“What that would mean for the community to have that quality conference space is that it allows us to bring back groups we’ve had in Greeley previously,” said Sarah MacQuiddy, president of the Greeley Chamber of Commerce. “The size of conferences we’re looking at obviously will allow other properties to capitalize as well.”

Greeley led the state in hotel occupancy just a few years ago when the oil and gas boom was at its zenith, but that activity in Weld County has declined along with the price of oil.

“I think that business will be back,” MacQuiddy said, “but there’s enough outside the industry to keep the property alive and booming. I believe the oil and gas industry would be a complement to bring in meetings; we just have to look at what’s going to be the best sell for Greeley.”

New tourism destinations

Perhaps the most ambitious proposed hotel projects in Northern Colorado are contingent on winning a grant from the state.

The Go NoCo group, a nonprofit coalition of representatives from local governments and private businesses, hoped to convince the state’s Economic Development Commission to grant $80.7 million to help with the cost of four proposed projects including a four-star, $110 million, 300-room PeliGrande Golf Resort and Conference Center along Lake Water Valley in Windsor and a 330-room Indoor Waterpark Resort of the Rockies, north of the Budweiser Events Center in Loveland.

The commission’s decision on the grant, to be awarded through Colorado’s Regional Tourism Act, was due on Nov. 12.

If the grant were approved, said Stacy Johnson, Windsor’s director of economic development, the PeliGrande resort also would include The Boathouse, an upscale, nautical-themed restaurant that operates now only at Disney World theme parks in Orlando, Fla., and Shanghai, China.

“It’s an attraction restaurant in its own right, with a water taxi, dockside bar and food to die for,” Johnson said.

“The state had the incentive for tourism, and that’s what inspired us to go find attractions and bring them to Northern Colorado,” she said.

What would it mean for Windsor, which is celebrating its 125th anniversary?

“It’s a chance to go back to our roots,” she said. “People used to come here for Windsor Lake.”

The tourism grant could mean more than 145,000 annual visitors to the area, she said, and the resort’s developer, Brentwood, Tenn.-based Senate Hospitality, estimates that the resort could bring 862 construction jobs, followed by 334 permanent jobs.

“I call it diversifying our base,” Johnson said.

The state funding would come through the Office of Economic Development and International Trade through the Regional Tourism Act passed in 2009, which allows the rebating of state sales-tax revenue that new, out-of-state visitors would generate in a predetermined tourism zone.

PeliGrande would include a luxury spa, fitness center, 58,500 square feet of ballroom and meeting space and retail services.

The Indoor Waterpark Resort, visible from Interstate 25, would feature a 75,000-square-foot indoor waterpark, 55,000-square-foot outdoor waterpark and more than 20,000 square feet of other indoor attractions in its Family Entertainment Center.

Boulder County growth

Boulder, which lost 344 rooms when three hotels were demolished, will see a net gain of 340 rooms when two new hotels at 28th Street and Canyon Boulevard are completed – and talk continues about expanding the luxury St Julien Hotel, locating new overnight spots on University Hill and even developing lodging on University of Colorado-owned land north of campus. A 150-room Hyatt Place Boulder opened in April at Depot Place at Boulder Junction and a land sale may bring a Residence Inn to the Village Shopping Center area.

Denver-based NAI Shames Makovsky is partnering with Boulder developer Lou DellaCava’s LJD Enterprises on redevelopment of the 28th and Canyon site, the former home of the Golden Buff hotel and Eads Newsstand. Shames Makovsky is building a 203-room Embassy Suites and a 172-room Hilton Garden Inn next to DellaCava’s new 42,000-square-foot office building.

“It may seem a boom is happening,” wrote Mary Ann Mahoney, executive director of the Boulder Convention and Visitors Bureau, in a column in BizWest earlier this month, “however we are replacing rooms and realizing we have capacity to grow hotel rooms in Boulder.”

The city had been losing overnight and conference business  – including the sales- and lodging-tax revenue – to outlying cities, she wrote, including the 16-year-old, 390-room Omni Interlocken Hotel in Broomfield as well as a Courtyard by Marriott, a Residence Inn, a Hampton Inn and a Best Western Plus.

In Longmont, Rezac said she’s seeing a shift from predominantly business travel to more leisure visitors.

“In the most recent survey, we were more business traveler than leisure,” Rezac said, “but that was years back, 2012, and it was 75-25. But during summer now, I think it’s very well skewed toward leisure. We figure that at least 40 percent of the people coming through that travel to Rocky Mountain National Park are doing something with Longmont.”

But the good news for Longmont is that not all of the tourists are just passing through. Beer and golf are becoming major tourist draws for the city.

“We went from three breweries to nine now,” she said. “The whole craft beer movement on the Front Range of Colorado as a whole is becoming a major attraction, And related to craft beer is the whole craft culinary movement and the distilleries. I just see that portion of the market continuing to grow in years to come.

“Outdoor activities are big, too,” she said. “For a city our size to have three public golf courses is unheard of.”

Budget-conscious travel

Not all the growth in Northern Colorado hotels targets the high end. Smaller inns that focus on guests who want just the basics are being built as well.

Holiday Inn Express locations are sprouting in Broomfield and Greeley and Fairfield Inns are planned in Longmont and Fort Lupton.

Oklahoma-based Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores Inc. closed on 20 acres of vacant land at the southwest corner of Interstate 25 and Colorado Highway 56 in Berthoud, and part of that plan could include a 60- to 80-room inn run by either Best Western Plus, Sleep Inn or Microtel & Suites by Wyndham Hotels.

Meanwhile, Aberdeen, S.D.-based My Place Hotels of America LLC plans a 64-unit, three-story hotel in the Crossroads Business Park in east Loveland that would provide economical extended-stay accommodations for business travelers.

Dallas Heltzell can be reached at 970-232-3149, 303-630-1962 or dheltzell@bizwestmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DallasHeltzell.