Hotel Longmont rising downtown

LONGMONT — Construction is well underway on the 85-room Hotel Longmont, and its developer has a November 2025 target date for opening it.

The Thrash Group, based in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, is building the $24.5 million boutique hotel, which is expected to include an upscale rooftop restaurant, on what had been a city-owned parking lot on the northwest corner of Third Avenue and Kimbark Street.

The Longmont City Council voted unanimously in late 2022 to approve an agreement that established the framework for land acquisition and subsidies for the project.

The plan as submitted to the council calls for “approximately 4,000 square feet of commercial space at ground level, including pre-function, meeting space, retail or a combination of both, as well as an approximate 5,000-square-foot rooftop restaurant with views and outdoor patio space facing to the west.”

Called Longmont Supply Co., “we started working on the restaurant concept about a year ago,” Thrash Group partner Joe Thrash said. “I can’t give all the details away yet, but it will be chef driven along with support from our team of chefs, so most of the menu won’t be complete until right before opening. In short, it is elevated (literally) dining focusing on the bounty of the region: steak, game, fish and local produce, curated wine list with a cocktail program to match, and exclusive rooftop views of the Rockies.”

The agreement signed off on by the Longmont Downtown Development Authority and Longmont City Council transferred ownership of the city property to Thrash and established an incentive package worth $4.3 million, or about 17.6% of the overall project cost estimate. That total includes the value of publicly owned parking lot land, $2.3 million in tax-increment funding, $1.2 million in lodging-tax reimbursements and $400,000 in downtown improvement program proceeds from the LDDA.

Beyond Longmont’s downtown core, there are a host of projects — mostly residential, but also some commercial, industrial mixed-use and flex — is various stages of development.

The ModernWest 2 development by TreeLine Homes Inc., on 27.25 acres south of Rogers Road and east of Airport Road near the Vance Brand Airport has recently been making its way through Longmont’s approvals and entitlements process.

That project, which, according to city documents, includes “a range of residential uses as well as commercial/light industrial uses,” faced opposition from the Federal Aviation Administration and Colorado Department of Transportation, which sent strongly worded letters to the city questioning the development’s compatibility with airport uses and warning that the city’s eligibility for federal and state grants to fund airport operations could be threatened.

In northwest Longmont, developer Pennrose LLC is planning Ascent at Hover Crossing, a $23 million affordable-housing community that will rise on 2.41 acres northeast of the intersection of 17th Avenue and Hover Street. The project will include one-, two-, three- and four-bedroom apartments in two three-story buildings. Completion is projected for January 2026.

On the commercial real estate front, Longmont planning officials have taken a mixed approach to drive-thru restaurants. While the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission recently gave their blessing to a plan from Ziggi’s Coffee to build a drive-thru coffee shop and cafe on Airport Road, the board declined to support a proposal from a subsidiary of McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD) to build a drive-thru restaurant across town at Sandstone Marketplace, which features a similar zoning designation as the site where the Ziggi’s is planned.

BizWest managing editor Lucas High contributed to this report.