Colorado Real Estate Journal -
Starwood’s Aloft hotel brand will make its downtown Denver debut next summer, adding to the central business district’s growing inventory of hotel rooms. JBK Hotels is developing the 140-room hotel on a former Burger King site at 800 15th St. that it acquired last year. The property is within a block of the Colorado Convention Center, and the brand will be a good fit for the downtown, according to JBK’s Jonathan Gandhi. The urban setting, with proximity to the convention center, Denver Center for the Performing Arts and Lower Downtown, create the perfect setting for the “lifestyle” brand, he said. “It was really the perfect match for that brand hotel,” said Gandhi. “We thought it would be very successful there.” Slated to open in late June 2014, the six-story Aloft hotel will be a first for Gandhi and his brother, Krishna Gandhi. Their family is in the hotel business in Connecticut, but this will be the brothers’ first solo venture and the family’s first Colorado hotel. Located across the street from the Embassy Suites Denver Downtown/Convention Center, it will be the third Aloft hotel in the Denver metro area. Others are located at Arista in Broomfield and near Denver International Airport. The 140 rooms are among more than 1,000 hotel rooms recently opened or planned within a few blocks of the convention center. Stonebridge Cos. recently opened a 302-room dual-brand hotel (Hampton Inn & Suites and Homewood Suites) at 15th and Welton streets and is under construction on a 230-room Renaissance in the former Colorado National Bank building at 17th and Champa streets. White Lodging Services plans to start construction on a dual-branded Hyatt Place and Hyatt House, which will have 346 rooms, at 14th Street and Glenarm Place this fall. A 110-room boutique hotel also will be built at Denver Union Station in Lower Downtown. “Downtown Denver is one of the strongest markets in the Denver metro area, and hotel investors have done well. When that happens, that leads to people building hotels,” said Mike Cahill, CEO and founder of HREC – Hospitality Real Estate Counselors, a Denver-based lodging and gaming real estate advisory firm. “You’re seeing kind of a natural evolution. The big question is the capability of Denver to absorb those rooms. Apparently the people who are building them believe it can.” Cahill said each of the brands has its own market niche in which it competes, so the impact of the increased inventory can’t be gauged without analyzing each of the various segments. Generally, new hotels perform better than existing product, he said. “It’s not unusual for new hotels to do better. Sometimes the market allows them to do better, and sometimes they do better at the expense of older properties.” Christine O’Donnell, president and CEO of the Colorado Hotel & Lodging Association, said “robust” hotel development downtown won’t go unnoticed. “While it adds to the diversity, beauty and restoration of historic locations like Union Station and the Colorado National Bank building, it is a significant number of rooms being added to the mix, which will have an initial impact on occupancy rates for existing hotels downtown until the market can adjust and get up to the rate of supply,” she said. Starwood describes Aloft Hotels as a “modern, fresh and fun” concept. The hotels feature an open design and bars called w xyz that offer snacks and entertainment. The Denver hotel is being built by MBC Construction and will be managed by Rim Hospitality. Olive Architecture is the architect.