Hotel Boulderado named finalist for Historic Hotels of America awards

BOULDER — The Hotel Boulderado has been named a finalist for a pair of Historic Hotels of America awards.

Organized by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the group recognizes lodges around the country as part of its Historic Hotels Annual Awards of Excellence.

Hotel Boulderado is up for the Best City Center Historic Hotel award and the Best Social Media of a Historic Hotel honor. 

Hotel Boulderado — Boulder’s first luxury hotel — was taken over last year by Adventurous Journeys Capital Partners, also known as AJ Capital Partners or AJCP, an investment firm that plans to renovate the lodge and bring it under the Graduate by Hilton portfolio. 

Graduate is a collegiate-themed Hilton brand with locations in many college towns, including Chapel Hill, North Carolina (University of North Carolina); Palo Alto, California (Stanford University); and Tucson, Arizona (University of Arizona).

Workers at Hotel Boulderado, which will serve as Sundance Film Festival headquarters in January, are organizing in an effort to improve job security and working conditions.

The Boulderado employees requested last month that AJCP and Schulte Hospitality Group, which provides the hotel owner with operations staffing, voluntarily recognize their union. If the companies do not, the workforce could petition to hold an election that would decide whether to officially organize.

Frank Day, the Boulder hospitality-scene luminary who died last year at 93, bought the Hotel Boulderado in 1980 and offloaded it to AJCP last March, months before his death.

Roughly two dozen workers have lost their jobs since the Hotel Boulderado changed ownership, according to a July report from the Boulder Reporting Lab. And some employees who have kept their positions have seen shifts reduced and workloads increased, resulting in worse service for guests.

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