The developer of the proposed Gaylord Rockies hotel in Aurora has secured $500 million in private financing for the $824 million project, enough for it to move ahead with construction despite a lingering lawsuit that seeks to strip state incentives from the project.
Officials from the Aurora Economic Development Council and Rida Development Corp. has scheduled a Thursday-morning news conference to announce the new commitment of money and to discussed the progress for the project. The Aurora Sentinel newspaper first reported the story.
Though the 1,500-room conference center received a commitment for some $300 million in funding in the form of tax incentives from the city of Aurora in 2011 and another $81.4 million from the Colorado Economic Development Commission in May 2012, it has been stuck largely in limbo for years.
Original developer Gaylord Entertainment Co. pulled off of the project just two weeks after it received Regional Tourism Act incentives from the Colorado EDC, and Rida’s entrance to the project spawned a lawsuit from 11 Front Range hotels demanding that the EDC reconsider its funding application.
Two courts have ruled for Aurora in that lawsuit, although the hotels have appealed it to the Colorado Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Aurora dropped its appeal in August of an Adams County District Court decision that nullified an election it held to create a special taxing district for the hotel, despite the fact that the court’s decision in that case reduced the tax breaks that Aurora could grant to Rida by tens of millions of dollars.
Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan said at the time that both the city and Rida wanted to get past the lawsuits so that Rida could secure funding that its backers would be unwilling to give it if the project remained in legal limbo.
Multiple calls to Aurora city officials and economic-development leaders went unreturned on Wednesday afternoon. But the press release says that Hogan, Rida CEO Ira Mitzner and Aurora Economic Development Council president and CEO Wendy Mitchell will gather at the Aurora Municipal Center to discuss “the successful signing of $500 million commitment for Gaylord Rockies Resort and Conference Center.”
Hogan and other leaders have touted what they say will be 450,000 out-of-state visitors that the project will attract annually, many drawn from a pool of corporations and conventions that rotate between existing Gaylord facilities outside of Dallas, Nashville, Orlando and Washington D.C.
That ability to draw tourists from outside Colorado is what convinced seven of the nine state EDC members in 2012 to award it sales-tax-increment financing over the next 30 years.
But the project also has been draped in controversy:
Colorado Treasurer Walker Stapleton requested an audit of how it received RTA money.
Senate President Bill Cadman offered and then killed a bill earlier this year that could have blocked its state money.
And prominent Denver hotel leaders — including Sage Hospitality CEO Walter Isenberg and Stonebridge Companies CEO Navin Dimond — have argued that Colorado should not fund a project that is going to cannibalize guests from their and other downtown Denver hotels.
Workers hurriedly began erecting fences and building soil erosion barriers on the site of the hotel in April as rumors circulated about the bill that Cadman was getting ready to introduce. Major construction work has yet to begin, however, on the site that also is set to include a $25 million water park for hotel guests.