Bray Wha
ler was pleased to participate in HVS’ recent 2016 HVS Hotel Market Connections event. In the “Denver Market at a Glance” update, the HVS team detailed the city’s burgeoning hotel development pipeline. The Crawford Hotel Union Station and the Westin DIA now anchor both ends of the light rail and have fueled other development in those areas.
Across the street from Union Station, the Union Tower West development includes office space and a 180-room Indigo hotel. Nearby, Block A/Hotel Born is a 200-room boutique under construction.
The Maven, a 172-room boutique at 19th and Wazee is part of the mixed use redevelopment of the historic Windsor Dairy Block in LoDo, slated to open in spring 2017.
One block from the Colorado Convention Center, a dual- branded AC Marriott and Le Meridien at 15th Street and California will add 495 keys. This project is also anticipated to open in early 2017.
The River North neighborhood will expand with the contemporary Source Hotel. Cherry Creek will see the addition of the Halcyon and the Rollnick, two more boutique hotels slated to open in 2017.
Last, and certainly not least, located minutes from Denver International Airport in Aurora, the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center has finally been cleared for take-off and will boast 1,500 guest rooms and over 485,000 square feet of convention space, competing directly with the established downtown convention center hotels.
Can Denver absorb this much new supply? That’s a question that keeps Roger Scharf, President and CEO of Visit Denver awake at night. According to Scharf, the city’s hospitality industry is fueled by Denver’s overall economic health and popularity as a destination. DIA is the 6th busiest airport in the US and the 19th busiest in the world. Denver has the country’s 4th most diversified economy and is experiencing record-setting population growth. Fingers crossed for Denver and all of its local developers. Denverites already have a hotel portfolio of which to be proud, and it is going to keep getting better with all of the new development in the upper upscale segment.
