The iconic Stanley Hotel in Estes Park has been sold to a public-private partnership involving the Colorado Educational and Cultural Facilities Authority and private investors in the authority’s $400 million bond sale.
The new Stanley Partnership for Art Culture and Education — or SPACE — will own the 41-acre, 140-room Stanley Hotel complex, with the hotel’s nearly 30-year owner John Cullen managing the property. The $400 million bond offering will fund expansions on the historic property, with the addition of 65 lodging rooms and a 65,000-square-foot event center.
“I have owned The Stanley for almost 30 years and can’t imagine a better way to both preserve and grow it for generations to come,” Cullen said in a statement.
That event center is funded in part by a $46 million sales tax package from the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade and the Colorado Economic Development Commission’s Regional Tourism Act program.
A year ago the Colorado legislature amended the statute that governs the cultural facilities authority so that it could purchase the Stanley Hotel. The Colorado Educational and Cultural Facilities Authority — or CECFA — formed in 1981 and has helped 300 organizations across the state secure $7.6 billion in low-interest, tax-exempt bonds for schools, student housing, performance halls, museums and Olympic training facilities. The legislation signed into law in May 2024 allows the authority to form a nonprofit that will own and manage the Stanley Hotel, marking the first property owned by the 44-year-old CECFA.
The new ownership plan was hatched more than a year ago when the longtime owner, Cullen, who bought the dilapidated hotel out of bankruptcy in 1996 and has invested many millions in upgrades, announced plans to sell.
The Stanley Hotel, photographed on Feb. 17, 2023, in Estes Park, has 140 rooms and 14,000 square feet of event space. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)The original plan called for selling Cullen’s 89-unit Fall River Village Resort.
The Estes Park Housing Authority acquired the Fall River Village complex in October, using roughly $7 million from the voter-approved Proposition 123 housing program. The Estes Park Housing Authority plans to convert the short-term rental lodging units into 66 long-term, affordable rental units for local workers earning 60%-80% of the region’s median income.
The new event center will include an 864-seat auditorium and horror film museum curated by Hollywood’s Blumhouse Productions. The Stanley complex is expected to host portions of the Sundance Film Festival next year as the world’s largest film festival relocates to Boulder from Utah.
The new partnerships surrounding the historic hotel, which inspired Stephen King’s “The Shining,” are already helping to lure film productions to Colorado, which in turn promotes the state’s tourism industry, said Jeff Kraft, the deputy director of OEDIT in a statement.
“By supporting the new ownership structure, we have an opportunity to grow these activities and realize the vision for this Regional Tourism Act project as one that boosts out-of-state tourism, contributes to the local economy, and creates jobs for Coloradans,” Kraft said.
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