A plan is underway to convert one of the oldest hotel properties in Colorado into new apartment housing.
Located at 4 S. Cascade Avenue, the 273-room Antlers Hotel was built in early 1967, but its antecedent operation stretches back all the way to the early 1880s when industrialist William Jackson Palmer built the first version of the inn in the center of downtown Colorado Springs.
That hotel became known for its classic architecture and elegant rooms, but mostly for the large deer and elk racks installed primarily in the building’s lobby.
A fire destroyed that structure in the fall of 1898, leading to the construction of a second Italian Renaissance-designed hotel in 1901, regarded by tour guides as one of the finest hotels in the West.
That building was demolished in the mid-1960s to make way for the third version of the Antlers, which through the decades has had several owners, but has most recently been branded as a Wyndham Hotel.
Now, a plan submitted to the City of Colorado Springs is calling for a drastic repurposing of the 14-floor structure seeing the 273 hotel rooms downsized to 166 apartment units. If so developed, the building would be known as the XO Lofts@Antlers.
The project has been proposed by a Thornton-based investment group, but not yet officially sanctioned by the owners of the hotel, who purchased the property for nearly $22 million some seven years ago.
If the project advances, the building will also see the construction of a fitness facility, collaborative workspaces, restaurants, and both indoor and outdoor swimming pools.
William Jackson Palmer, who served as a Union general during the Civil War, not only built the first Antlers Hotel, he is also the founder of the city of Colorado Springs itself.
By Garry Boulard
