The Antlers targeted to remain a full-service hotel in downtown Colorado Springs

Dec. 23—The Antlers hotel will remain The Antlers hotel.

Nearly five months after potential buyers submitted a proposal to city government planners that envisioned transforming the 273-room, historic downtown Colorado Springs hotel into 166 apartments, co-owner and local attorney Perry Sanders Jr. says The Antlers isn't changing hands.

"The Antlers is absolutely, under no circumstances, selling," Sanders said this week.

He and partner John Goede, also an attorney, paid $21.7 million in October 2015 to buy the hotel, which originally was built by Springs founder Gen. William Jackson Palmer and stands across from the intersection of Cascade and Pikes Peak avenues where a survey crew drove the first stake in 1871 to mark the city's founding.

Not only is The Antlers not selling, Sanders said, but he and Goede are launching a celebration of their seven years of ownership with a series of hotel improvements and specials.

Hotel ballrooms — which host meetings, business conferences, luncheons, weddings and other events — will be upgraded with "super high definition" video screens, Sanders said. Six screens will be added to the Heritage ballroom, four in the Summit ballroom and one each in the Stratton and Fremont rooms. The ballrooms also are receiving new heavyweight carpeting, he said.

"We're going to put the finishing touches on the ballroom spaces with technology that wasn't obvious to use seven years ago," Sanders said, adding that state-of-the-art video screens are "just essential these days for people to make proper presentations."

Also, and in keeping with their seven-year ownership theme, a seven-hour, seven-day-a-week happy hour special will be offered at the hotel's Duca's Neapolitan Pizza and The Antlers' lobby bar.

Starting in early January, and from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day, 2-for-1 pizza, beer and tea specials will be available for purchase. The promotion might become a permanent feature at the hotel, Sanders said.

"We're doing (it) for the sole purpose of trying to accommodate downtown businesses where people still work," he said.

Duca's, meanwhile, will expand and take over the Sportivo Primo space at The Antlers, Sanders said. The Antlers Grille restaurant also is being targeted for changes, though Sanders said he couldn't yet discuss those details.

The Antlers hotel will continue to have 273 rooms, though Sanders said he and Goede have contemplated devoting a floor to a couple of large, family suites that would have six to seven rooms and a kitchen tied together.

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"That's up in the air and we're exploring that possibility," he said. "But for right now, it's steady as she goes. "

The planned and envisioned upgrades come after a Denver-based development and investment group submitted a proposal in early August to city officials for the possible conversion of The Antlers into apartments.

At that time, Sanders said he and Goede only authorized the Denver group to submit its plans, and cautioned that it was premature to assume the hotel would be sold and made over into apartments. He would never say if the Denver group had contracted to buy The Antlers.

Since a Gazette story about the group's proposal was published in August, Sanders said he lost millions of dollars in business from meetings and hotel stays. He said event planners and guests assumed The Antlers would become apartments — even though he was quoted as saying the Denver group's proposal was not a done deal.

Speaking now about The Antlers' future, Sanders said: "We've always had, and we still have, lots of options about what to do with the hotel. However, we have made the firm decision, after community input, to not only keep The Antlers as the iconic property it's been in name for over 100 years, we've decided to put the final touches on it being the best downtown group house and local gathering place that we can possibly make it."

Like other hotels, The Antlers went through trying times after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sanders said. Since then, the hotel has "recovered nicely," he said.

"We're really blessed with what we have," Sanders said, "and we're anxious to really make it the finest downtown conference center that we can possibly make something. That's our objective."

Nate Taylor, a representative of the Denver group that submitted plans to the city in August, didn't return a phone call Friday about the status of its plans.

Ryan Tefertiller, city urban planning manager, said Friday that the group's application remains active and hasn't been withdrawn, though he hasn't talked to its representatives in several weeks.

The original Antlers hotel was built by Palmer in June 1883. It was destroyed by fire in 1898, rebuilt, and demolished and rebuilt again in the 1960s.

At least four downtown hotels have opened since late 2019. But The Antlers — with 27,500 square feet of ballroom and meeting space, restaurants, pools and other amenities — remains the area's only full-service hotel and keeping it as such is critical for downtown's economy, said Susan Edmondson, president and CEO of the Downtown Partnership advocacy group.

"We also love the new hotels that have opened recently, but a full-service hotel is essential for large gatherings and attracting certain kinds of visitors that need that full-service hotel," Edmondson said. "So, we'd love to see continued upgrades to The Antlers. And keeping a full-service hotel in our downtown is important.

"While we've always stressed the importance of increasing residential (in downtown)," she added, "increasing residential at the cost of our only full-service hotel wasn't ideal."