Developer buys Millennium Harvest House for $72M

BOULDER — A Georgia developer with designs on transforming the aging Millennium Harvest House hotel into housing for University of Colorado students purchased the Boulder property in early January for nearly $71.9 million.

RHH Operating LLC, an entity registered with the Colorado Secretary of State’s office to the Denver address of Millennium Hotels and Resorts, sold the multi-building site at and around 1345 28th St. to Standard at Boulder LLC, a holding company registered to the Athens, Georgia, address of Landmark Properties Inc., according to Boulder County real estate records. 

Landmark, which began its planning process prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, intends to replace the aging Millennium Harvest House hotel adjacent to the CU campus with three 4-story buildings containing 303 student-housing rental apartments — a mix of studio, one-, two-, three-, and four-bedroom units. The complex would have more than 900 bedrooms.

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“The proposal involves a modification to allow four-story buildings, approximately 53 feet in height where a maximum of three stories and 35 feet in height is permitted by right,” city planning documents show.

Plans for the redeveloped property call for significant public amenities centered along Boulder Creek, Landmark representatives told Boulder planning officials last summer when the proposal was under review. 

Board members were nonplussed by the building design of Landmark’s proposal, arguing that the buildings are too large, too tall, too long and too aesthetically uninteresting to properly represent the city, especially given the hotel site’s placement along a corridor that serves to welcome visitors entering and exiting the city onto U.S. Highway 36. 

To address some of the board’s concern, Landmark’s design team stepped down the building massing and the length of facade along 28th Street, improved the quality of building detailing, relocated the main entry, added corner balconies and reduced the number of bedrooms by eight.

The Harvest House Hotel, as it was known when it opened, was built in 1958. The building was designed by Denver architect Ralph Peterson. 

The hotel site is home to several “cottages,” which house local small businesses such as the Dream Makers Preschool and Single Track Mountain Bike Adventure. Landmark’s plans include the retention of these buildings and their tenants. 

What the developer’s proposal does not include is the retention of the Rocky Mountain Tennis Center and its tennis bubble. 

The Millennium Harvest House Hotel site also has an existing fish observatory built into the side of Boulder Creek. The plan is for this feature to remain when the apartments are built.