Site of planned 7-story hotel in RiNo sells for $4.25M
By James Rodriguez – Reporter, Denver Business Journal
The site of a planned seven-story hotel at 3601 Brighton Blvd., in Denver’s River North Art District, has sold for $4.25 million, according to property records.
The buyer is listed as CH Brighton Denver LLC, an entity that appears to be tied to Rockville, Maryland-based Choice Hotels International Inc. (NYSE: CHH), which operates the upscale Cambria brand of hotels.
The seller in the deal is Red Truck Beer Company, a Vancouver-based brewery that once hoped to open a new location on the property, but has since abandoned those plans. Company representatives were not available for comment Monday.
Russell Gruber of Gruber Commercial Real Estate Services Inc. arranged the transaction on behalf of the seller.
In January, Denver-based HighSide Development, appearing to be working on behalf of Choice Hotels, proposed a roughly 150-key hotel on the 0.43-acre site, according to previous Denver Business Journal reporting. The project is known as Cambria RiNo.
The latest formal site development plan, updated in June, calls for a roughly 81,624-square-foot hotel building with 153 keys. The ground level would include a lobby, lounge, fitness center, public bar and restaurant, administrative offices and back-of-house space.
The second level would include amenity spaces such as meeting rooms and an outdoor terrace.
Plans for the hotel have not yet been fully approved by the City of Denver and could still change. Baskervill is the architect and interior designer on the project. Kimley-Horn is providing civil engineering services, and Brinkmann Constructors is the general contractor.
HighSide is developing several other Cambria projects across the country, according to its website.
Construction on Cambria RiNo is expected to begin in early 2022 and finish in the summer of 2023, according to Kevin McKinney, executive vice president at HighSide.
“We are excited to be working on a project in our backyard and bringing another great hotel to the RiNo neighborhood,” McKinney told DBJ in an email.
Across the street from the Cambria RiNo site, at 3560 Brighton Blvd., construction is underway on the 140-room Vib Hotel. The hotel, which is set to open in the fourth quarter of 2021, will include 2,000 square feet of conference space and a rooftop bar with 360-degree views.
Catbird Hotel, a boutique, extended-stay hotel, recently made its debut at the intersection of Walnut and Marion streets in RiNo.
RiNo is also home to The Source Hotel, a 100-room hotel located along Brighton Boulevard.