The Denver Tech Center neighborhood is set to welcome its first boutique hotel in early 2024.
Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group LLC made its plans public Thursday. Kimpton Denver Tech Center will join a number of other big-name hotel brands in the area, including Hyatt Hotels Corp., Hilton Hotels Corp. and Marriott International Inc.
“The U.S. Mountain Region has always been an appealing market for us,” said Mike DeFrino, CEO of Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants. “We’re thrilled to be expanding in Colorado and look forward to working alongside our partners at DTC Hospitality to bring their vision to life.”
The new hotel will be Kimpton’s third in the Denver metro area, along with downtown’s Kimpton Hotel Monaco Denver and Kimpton Hotel Born at Union Station in Lower Downtown.
The group operates 75 hotels, with 32 more under development, as of Sept. 30. The InterContinental Hotels Group plc, a British company, agreed to acquire Kimpton in late 2014 for $430 million in cash.
The Kimpton brand claims on its website that it “first introduced the boutique concept” to the U.S. The Boutique & Lifestyle Leaders Association considers boutique hotels “no longer a subtype of the larger hotel industry,” and lists different style categories they can fall under, such as adventure, branded, historic, hipster and luxury.
The boutique hotel sector is seeing expansion, accounting for almost 5,500 hotels across the U.S. – a 7.7% jump compared to 2021, said Christian E. Hardigree, dean of the Metropolitan State University of Denver’s School of Hospitality.
The Denver Tech Center, or DTC, is located southeast of downtown near Cherry Creek State Park. The neighborhood encompasses parts of Denver and Greenwood Village. The area is home to several corporate offices, including IBM Corp., H5 Data Centers, Oracle Corp. and Zoom Video Communications Inc.
The new Kimpton hotel will be owned by DTC Hospitality Investors LLC, and developed by Cypress 16 LLC, alongside McClurg Century Investments LLC. It will consist of 190 guest rooms, a ground-floor restaurant and bar, and a 19th-floor rooftop bar and lounge, among other spaces.
AptAmigo, a real estate technology startup, notes that new construction is “popping up overnight” in DTC, and describes the neighborhood as “bustling, energetic, drivable, professional and social.”
