Antlers Hotel (Colorado Springs, Colorado)

Geography

The hotel site is located in the center of downtown Colorado Springs, on Cascade Avenue, just off of Colorado Avenue. It is near Interstate 25. The hotel is near the former Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad depot building and Antlers Park and adjacent to the Antlers Garage.

Description

The downtown hotel has 292 rooms, including seven executive suites. Within the hotel are an indoor pool, health club, day spa, beauty salon, restaurant, and a pub.

First building (1883-1898)

In June 1883, twelve years after he founded the City of Colorado Springs, William Jackson Palmer built The Antlers hotel. It was named for the large elk and deer racks that Palmer installed in the hotel. It had 75 unique guest rooms, a music room, Turkish Bath, children's playroom, billiards room, and a barber shop. The hotel had gas lights, steam heat, hot and cold water, and a hydraulic elevator. It was unusually elegant for a hotel in the west. Palmer contributed $125,000 (equivalent to $3,212,946 in 2016) towards the cost of its construction.

Second building (1901-1964)

It burned down on October 1, 1898, when a fire was started at the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railway freight depot Palmer rebuilt the hotel in 1901 with Italian Renaissance architecture, designed by the Varian and Sterner architectural firm. It was an elegant hotel with commanding views of Pikes Peak, 200 rooms, a restaurant, the Rose Ballroom, fireproof walls, tapestries, and mosaic floors. Presidents who visited the hotel include Theodore Roosevelt, who gave a speech off a hotel balcony in 1901, and Warren G. Harding, William Henry Harrison, and William Howard Taft. William Jackson Palmer died in 1909, after which Spencer Penrose attempted to buy the hotel but could not reach an agreement. Instead, he built The Broadmoor. The second Antlers Hotel building was torn down after September 20, 1964, when the last guest checked out.

Third building (1967-present)

The current structure was built by Western International Hotels and opened on March 20, 1967 as the Antlers Plaza Hotel. The hotel is about 170 feet (52 m) tall with 14 floors.

Western International operated the hotel until March 31, 1975, when it was taken over by the Broadmoor Management Company, which shuttled guests to and from The Broadmoor in a double-decker London-styled bus. The Antlers hotel was remodeled for $24,000,000 in 1989-1990 (equivalent to $46,369,933 in 2016). In 1998, the hotel, then operating as the Antlers Doubletree Hotel, was sold to the Adam's Mark Hotels & Resorts for $35.4 million (equivalent to $52,015,884 in 2016). It was renamed the Antlers Adam's Mark.

The hotel was purchased for $27.2 million (equivalent to $35,412 in 2016) in 2003 by a joint venture of Morgan Stanley Real Estate Group and Pyramid Hotel Group, which then spent an estimated $7.5 million (equivalent to $9,764,381 in 2016) in renovations. When it announced the renovations to the 292 room hotel, the hotel changed its name from Antlers Adam's Mark Hotel to Antlers Hilton Hotel.

A limited liability company of LNR Partners of Miami Beach, Florida, which was the hotel's lender, took control of the firm in 2007. The hotel went into foreclosure and was purchased by an entity of LNR Partners at a foreclosure auction in December 2013.

On October 27, 2015, the property was purchased by attorneys Perry R. Sanders, Jr. and John Goede. The new owners quickly dropped the Hilton name, renaming the hotel simply "The Antlers". On September 29, 2016, the hotel joined Wyndham Hotels as The Antlers, A Wyndham Hotel.

In 1927, there were 24 hotels in downtown Colorado Springs, and as of 2015, the Antlers and the Mining Exchange are the only remaining downtown hotels. The hotel has been a four-diamond rated hotel by the American Automobile Association (AAA) since 2007.