New owners promise a major revamp of Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel

A newly formed investment group has purchased Colorado’s largest hotel, the Sheraton Denver Downtown, and pledged to revamp the aging property as an even larger rival is set to open.

High Street Real Estate Partners of Atlanta and Eagle Four Partners of Newport Beach, California, formed a Denver-based joint venture called HS-EF Court Place to purchase the hotel from its prior owner, Chartres Lodging Group LLC of San Francisco, for an undisclosed sum on Sept. 28.

“We are thrilled to be the new owners of Sheraton Denver Downtown and look forward to being an integral part of the downtown community,” said Kory Kramer, a partner with Eagle Four Partners, in a press release. “Our investment strategy is opportunistic, seeking hotel assets in top-tier markets with excellent locations and long-term growth potential generating strong and consistent returns.”

Chartres Lodging purchased the hotel, then operating under the Adams Mark brand, in 2007 for $176 million from Fred Kummer’s HBE Corp. It rebranded the property as a Sheraton and sold the land under the building for $210 million in 2015.

Legendary architect I.M. Pei designed the hotel, which opened in 1960 as a Hilton property, and also spent some time under the Radisson flag.

The hotel, located on the east end of 16th Street Mall on Court Place, has 1,231 rooms and 133,000 square feet of meeting space. It will surrender its long-held title as Colorado’s largest hotel when the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Convention Center opens just south of Denver International Airport in Aurora in December with more than 1,500 rooms and 485,000 square feet of meeting space.

Denver’s hotel market is highly competitive, and several properties have completed major renovations, including the Brown Palace, Hotel Teatro, the Monaco Hotel and the Renaissance Denver Stapleton Hotel.

The Sheraton Denver’s new owners said they plan to renovate the guest rooms and public spaces to coincide with a relaunch of the Sheraton brand, which came under the umbrella of Marriott International in September 2016 when it acquired Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide.

Marriott also operates the Gaylord brand and intervened at a critical point to make sure that the struggling Gaylord Rockies Resort and Convention Center could get off the ground in 2015.

Source:  Denverpost.com