Before the 200-room St. Julien opened on Ninth Street, between Canyon Boulevard and Walnut Street, the last hotel to open was the Hotel Boulderado. That was in 1909.
The hotel will include 11 two-room suites, rooms with an average size of 400 sf, a 10,000-sf spa and fitness center, a two-lane swimming pool and a 650-space public parking garage beneath the hotel. The rack rates will be in the $245 to $600 per night range.
The hotel is owned by Bruce Porcelli, a local businessman, and two partners that he declines to name. Porcelli has been working on the hotel development for about a decade. The anti-growth attitude in Boulder in the 1980s and 1990s made it difficult to develop anything in the city, he notes. Indeed, several other hotel proposals failed in the same area.
The hotel is part of the Preferred Hotel L& Resorts World Wide operation. In Colorado, other Preferred hotels include the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs and the Lodge at Vail. The Brown Palace in Downtown Denver previously had been a Preferred Hotel. Porcelli says Preferred has the highest percentage of four- and five-star hotels in the country.
The hotel 's general manager is David Lurie. He had been working for another Preferred Hotel in San Antonio. Before that, he had worked for TV celebrity Merv Griffin on his hotels in Beverly Hills and Palm Springs, CA.
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