Developers respond to idea for downtown Denver hotel

[The Voice of Reason]

http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/stori...25/story11.html

Denver-based Focus Property Group wants to build a 22-story hotel on what's now a surface parking lot at 14th and Stout streets, across from the convention center.

The surface lot would be replaced by a seven-story, above-ground parking garage with 7,500 square feet of retail on the first level, making the entire structure 29 stories.

Focus Property Group owns the 25,000-square-foot surface lot and has hired Hospitality Real Estate Consultants (HREC) to find a developer to build the 400-room, $100 million upscale hotel.

Recent projects along 14th Street include:

• The Curtis Hotel -- a redevelopment of the old Executive Tower Inn -- opened in January 2007 at 1405 Curtis St. The pop-culture hotel has 336 rooms, 19,000 square feet of meeting space and a new ground-level restaurant called the Corner Office. Sage Hospitality LLC owns and operates it.

• Ground broke last September on a 45-story, 230-room and 102-condo Four Seasons Hotel & Residences at 14th and Arapahoe streets. The $350 million project is being built to meet five-star, five-diamond standards -- a move that its developers, Jeff Selby and Michael Brenneman, say will boost the city's reputation.

• Two blocks away, a 41-story, $175 million condo project called Spire is under construction at the corner of 14th and Champa streets.

• The Hilton Garden Inn-Denver Downtown at 14th and Welton streets opened last July. Englewood-based Stonebridge Cos. owns the 221-room, $35 million hotel.

• The Oceanaire Seafood Room at 14th and Arapahoe streets opened July 10, 2007.