long-standing denver hotel to get major upgrade and renovation

Plans have been announced to give a new look to a nearly 60 year-old hotel in downtown Denver that was designed by the legendary architect I.M. Pei.

The Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel is expected to see interior upgrades as a result of its purchase by a combination of the Eagle Four Partners of Newport Beach, California, a private equity firm, and the Atlanta-based High Street Real Estate Partners.

The combined ownership is now operating under the name of Denver HS-EF Court Place LLC.

Located on Denver’s famous 16th Street Mall, the more than 1,200-room hotel was unveiled in 1960 and celebrated for Pei’s sleek modernistic vision.

Upon its opening, Rose Marie Turk of the Los Angeles Times lauded the structure’s “warm woods, marble, sheets and sheets of glass (in some cases stained glass), and bright modern furniture.”

Originally branded as a Hilton Hotel, the building became a Sheraton property in 2008, and is the largest hotel in Denver with 130,000 square feet of functional space, a 28,000 square-foot ballroom, and both a fitness center and outdoor rooftop pool.

Made up of two structures, one at 8 stories, and the other 22 stories, the hotel has long been praised: “Few modern buildings have achieved the dramatic intensity that this soaring palisade affords,” notes author Francis Pierson in her 2006 book Getting to Know Denver.

Now, the new owners, according to sources, are promising to keep the structure’s design intact, while bringing up to date other aspects of a building that was completed when Dwight Eisenhower was president.

Renovations will include all of the hotel’s rooms, as well as its public space.

In a statement, Eric Tupler, the senior managing director of Holliday Fenoglio Fowler, the real estate firm that brokered the purchase of the hotel, said its sale demonstrates the “continued growth of the downtown Denver hotel market and the upside available for a new owner through renovation.”

By Garry Boulard

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