By Amy Fletcher, The Gazette, Colorado Springs, Colo.
Mar. 2--The Broadmoor hotel plans to spend $67 million during the next two years to renovate guest rooms, restaurants
and lobbies and build a new outdoor pool complex.
Among other things, guest rooms in the hotel's main building will be provided with Internet access and CD players.
"The idea is to make it look and feel like 1918 but still meet the needs of today's guest," said Steve
Bartolin, president and chief executive of The Broadmoor.
"We've done a lot over the last eight years and I'm real pleased with that work. This ...more than anything,
completes the property and I think positions us for at least the next decade where we can compete against the very
best in the nation and the world."
Not that The Broadmoor has been having any trouble. Unlike such well-known posh resorts as The Greenbrier, in West
Virginia, which recently lost its Mobil Travel Guide five-star rating, The Broadmoor has retained the prestigious
rating for 40 years.
But the hotel isn't taking any chances.
"You look at what's happened over the decade, and you've got a lot of new competition," Bartolin said.
"It's important we keep up."
Work, expected to be completed by May, has begun in the hotel complex's west building and five south conference
rooms. Construction of a new golf maintenance building also has started.
Taking a break during the hotel's busy season, The Broadmoor will resume renovations in November, rebuilding guest
rooms in the main building. Those projects at the main building, estimated to cost about $20 million, should be
completed in the spring of 2001.
"We'll rewire, replumb the entire building, we'll centralize the heat and air. We'll add elevator capacity,
we'll expand the lower lobby," Bartolin said.
For the past several years, The Broadmoor has redesigned the majority of its 700 guest rooms but not those in its
main building. Although the hotel has refurbished and remodeled them during the years, about 180 rooms will be
gutted and redone.
"When I say gut, we will literally knock down all the walls on the guest floors," he said. "The
rooms will be larger; the baths will be larger and more luxurious."
The project recognizes the increasing importance guest rooms play in a customer's visit.
Twenty years ago "they really didn't care so much about the guest rooms," Bartolin said. "It was
more the grandeur of the resort itself."
The rooms are oddly configured for today's traveler, he said. For example, they have extremely large closets, for
the trunks visitors used when they stayed all summer.
The bathrooms are a different story.
"You can barely turn around in them," he said. "That 1918 bathroom doesn't meet the expectation
of today's traveling public."
The new bathrooms will include marble, a separate shower stall, a soaking tub, two sinks and a separate room for
the toilet.
The rooms will also feature three telephones, high-speed Internet access and CD players.
The idea, Bartolin said, is to "keep the traditional look and feel ... yet do that in a way that gives a more
opulent guest room experience."
Larger rooms will mean the loss of about 22 rooms overall in the main building, but a new guest room wing is planned
for northeast of the resort's lake.
The Broadmoor's main pool, built in the 1950s, will also get a new look. The hotel plans to convert the existing
main and west pools to terraces and lawns. A pool complex will be at the north end of the lake.
Other renovations this winter include a new casual restaurant and espresso shop in Broadmoor West, a renovated
Charles Court with indoor-outdoor seating and a renovated west lobby.
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