Monday, July 25, 2011

New Hotel for Breckenridge?

Following a recent developer proposal for a 125-room branded hotel and conference space to be built in the F-Lot just off Main Street in Breckenridge, town council members put out a request for other hotel proposals for the site.


“We want to make sure that the council understands every possible alternative to maximize the value of the assets we have in town,” Councilman Mike Dudick said. “We owe it to the taxpayers to make sure that if we're going to do a deal, that we get the best deal possible.”

The council's request yielded two additional proposals, both bigger than the first, according to town documents.

A proposal submitted by Jack Wolfe of Wolfe & Company includes plans for a five-story150-room luxury hotel, a bar, 46 multi-family residence units for sale and a parking garage with 380 public spaces and 150 hotel spaces.

“This is really a tremendous setting,” Wolfe said of Breckenridge. “F-Lot is literally the doughnut hole of Breckenridge, the center of Breck, and we really don't have that grand hotel or town-center hotel.”

Wolfe said that was what he aimed to envision in his proposal.

Ascent Resort Partners joined forces with Hunn Consulting Group and O'Bryan Partnership architects to put forward a proposal for a branded 243-key hotel with a restaurant and bar, 40 residential units for sale and a parking structure holding 382 public spaces and 169 spaces reserved for the development, according to town documents.

Maryland-based builder Triumph Development came forward at a town council meeting in May with the initial proposal for a branded hotel, likely a Mariott. The developer called the project a public-private partnership, asking that the town make the land and density for the hotel available free of charge because the hotel would bring additional guests, beds and sales tax revenue to town.

Having a major name hotel, like Mariott, in Breckenridge would attract an entirely new brand-loyal customer base to the community, Triumph principal Steve Virostek told the council in May.

The Triumph proposal suggests harmonizing the hotel property with the nearby town-owned Riverwalk Center as well.

To date, the town council has offered little reaction on the idea of a hotel on the F-Lot property or Triumph's request for a donation of the land and density, although, they did express concerns at the council meeting in May that a new hotel might compete with existing restaurant and lodging businesses.

“It's not something we're going to pull the trigger on until the seven of us, along with staff, talk extensively about this,” Breckenridge Mayor John Warner told the Summit Daily in May.

The next opportunity the council will have to do that will likely be at their Aug. 9 meeting when developers may be given time for brief presentations of their concepts.