"I would have built a Downtown hotel, but not at this location, if not for the convention center expansion," Navin C. Dimond, president and chief executive officer of Stonebridge, tells GlobeSt.com. Dimond, whose privately held company owns 36 hotels in six states, says that typically Hilton Garden Inns are found in the suburbs and tend to provide limited services. "But because this is an urban hotel, it will have most of the amenities of a full-service Hilton," Dimond tells GlobeSt.com. "If a businessman, for example, wants to work out 45 minutes before breakfast, you'd better have a treadmill. And not just one, but a half-dozen or so. We're very familiar with the Hilton Garden Inn. It is a very good brand."

The hotel will include 4,000 sf of flexible meeting space, a gift shop, business center, rental car agency, a 150-seat restaurant, and a 50- to 60-seat lounge. It also will include a swimming pool, a large exercise room, high-speed Internet service and Wi-Fi. Daily room rates will likely be in the $135 to $185 range, less expensive than the almost adjacent 1,100-room Hyatt convention center hotel under construction.

"This hotel will be less intimidating than the Hyatt," Dimond tells GlobeSt.com. "And while they have 1,100 rooms to fill, we only have 220--20% of the rooms the Hyatt has."

He says he expects to get more leisure visitors than the Hyatt, but also get a fair number of business and convention travelers that either don't want to or can't afford the Hyatt. Also, he expects a lot of traffic from people who are setting up and tearing down exhibits at the convention center.

It will be the first Hilton in Downtown in about 20 years. William D. Zeckendorf, a famed New York City developer, opened a Hilton in Downtown Denver in 1960. But in the mid-1980s it became a Radisson and today is an Adam's Mark.

Stonebridge's hotels, combined, provide more than 4,000 room. The company has license agreement with seven franchises and operates nine brands including Radisson Hotel, Hilton Garden Inns, Homewood Suites, Hampton Inn & Suites, SpringHill Suites by Marriott, Courtyard by Marriott, Residence Inn by Marriott and Fairfield Inn by Marriott. Stonebridge has 18 hotels in Colorado with four projects under development that are scheduled to open this year and in 2006.