Denver’s Convention Hotel Will Be A Hyatt

DENVER— The City of Denver has selected Hyatt Corp. to begin exclusive negotiations to develop a 1,100-room convention center hotel. Mayor Wellington Webb made the decision following a review of term sheets from Hyatt and the Hilton, the two finalists in the selection process. The Citys convention center hotel committee will have a five-month negotiation period in which they will finalize all of the agreements between the City and the Hyatt. The City will progress on a publicly financed hotel with Hyatt as the manager and is scheduled to issue bonds in late March, 2003 to raise the design/development/construction capital for the hotel. Denver plans to break ground on the hotel in the Spring of 2003. Hyatt will manage the hotel but has also agreed to purchase $10 – 12 million worth of bonds in support of the transaction. Klipp Colussy Jenks DuBois Architects were chosen by the convention center hotel committee as the lead architectural team in association with Brennan Beer Gorman of New York City and Harold Massop Associates of Denver. The team will immediately begin working with the hotel committee and Hyatt on finalization of the hotels functional program, site assessment for final site selection and concept design. In March, citing the lack of progress in a proposed private development of a new hotel, Mayor Webb opted instead for the City to turn to the public tax-exempt bond market to publicly finance the construction of a new convention center hotel. In April, the City of Denver and the Denver CVB officially broke ground on the new Convention Center.