Non-profit subsidiary created for Colorado authority’s hotel purchase

The Colorado Educational and Cultural Facilities Authority (CECFA) created a non-profit subsidiary for its bond-financed purchase of a historic hotel that inspired Stephen King’s The Shining. 

The authority’s board on Wednesday passed a resolution to form the Stanley Partnership for Art, Culture, and Education, LLC, to facilitate the financing, ownership, and operation of the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado.

Mark Heller, CECFA’s executive director, said work continues on the size, timing, and structure of revenue bonds the authority would issue, with the proceeds loaned to the subsidiary. Members of the financing team are underwriter RBC Capital Markets, bond counsel Kutak Rock, and financial advisor PFM, he added.

A bill passed by the Colorado Legislature and signed into law in May allows CECFA to operate and manage facilities it finances through the issuance of bonds.

The authority’s plan emerged in March after an Arizona nonprofit pulled out of a deal to finance the property’s purchase and renovation with up to $475 million of cultural facilities revenue bonds issued through CECFA.

The subsidiary will hire the hotel’s current owner, Grand Heritage Hotel Group, to operate and manage the facility.

The hotel group’s plans include the Stanley Film Center, which it says “will be the permanent home for film, fun and the horror genre.”  The at least 67,000 square-foot film center building is estimated to cost more than $70 million to complete and furnish, with the state of Colorado contributing $46 million. 

A television mini-series based on The Shining used the Stanley Hotel, which is located just outside Rocky Mountain National Park, as a filming location. Timberline Lodge in Oregon stood in for the exterior of The Shining’s Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 movie version, which was mostly filmed in England.