DENVER-Developer Charlie Biederman, a co-founder of a company that is now Sunstone Hotels, plans to build a 196-room J.W. Marriott on the Sears Roebuck & Co. site in Cherry Creek. The 11-story building will be the first J.W. Marriott in the state.

There are only 23 J.W. Marriotts in the world, six of them in the US. Biederman, an architect by training, says the hotel will be the most luxurious in the Denver area when it opens in the spring of 2004. He anticipates the hotel will average room rates of about $170 per night, with an occupancy rate in the mid-60% range.

The hotel, to be built next to an office building for the mutual fund family of Janus, will get weekday business from Janus, as well as other office users in the area that lease a total of about 2 million sf, he says.