The 20-story Le Meridien/AC Hotel tower in the middle of Downtown Denver is now complete and both hotels are open for business! Not only does the new building remove a parking crater right by the Colorado Convention Center, but it also provides 488 rooms of lodging to the city core.
DenverInfill has a lot of coverage on this project, with a total of eight construction updates. Click here to explore the project from ground breaking to topping out.
To start the final update, let’s look at the project from the air. The Le Meridien side of the tower that faces California Street features an all-brick and glass facade. It also houses a rooftop bar and restaurant, which you can see in the second photo.
When looking at the tower from the street level, the 20-story building adds some nice height and is very pleasant along the sidewalk. Here are two views of the project looking straight up from the ground.
Let’s explore the ground level a bit more before moving around the building. The building has a very inviting ground floor, which is one of the most important pieces to any infill development. On 15th Street, there is the AC Hotel entrance and valet drop-off. If you look closely, the valet area crosses the 15th Street bike lane, so a delicate dance between cyclist and automobile has to occur when using this area.
Moving to the California Street side, you are greeted with the Le Meridien hotel entrance and a restaurant. The presence of a ground-floor commercial use so close to the Convention Center helps connect convention-goers to the rest of Downtown Denver. Nobody likes navigating through craters of parking in the downtown core.
With a lot of new developments around Downtown Denver, the subject of blank walls frequently comes up. The Le Meridien/AC Hotel project does have two very tall blank walls: one facing the Convention Center, and one facing the alley. As these might seem unattractive, it is worth mentioning that both these blank walls face surface parking lots. Once these parking lots are developed, these blank walls will be obscured and forgotten and the urban fabric will be restored.
Last but not least, here is a panorama showing the new dual-brand hotel tower, modern office tower, and apartment tower all along 15th Street.
The Le Meridien/AC Hotel project is another great contribution to Central Downtown, and both hotel brands are new to Downtown Denver, which is equally as exciting.
Bravo! It’s so great to see a hotel development in Denver where fit and finish is world-class. Really puts the Embassy Suites on the same block to shame. Now if we can just get two more high-rises built on the same block, we’re well on our way to giving Block 162 and the convention center the neighbors they deserve.
I can’t help but notice that this building looks a lot like a 21st-Century re-imagining of the Brown Palace’s 1960’s era addition on the West side of 17th and Tremont. I wonder if the architects were familiar.
Oh you mean there in the foreground? Sorry, I was looking at something else.
The rooftop bar is not to be missed….great happy hour deals with a view!
Can we just talk about how ugly the “AC Hotel” sign font is? Who’d’ve thunk something so trivial would make an entire 20-story facade look cheap.
This is an attractive building. The red and the green go well together without being the cliche’ “Colorado Colors”. The signage is not the best but I don’t think it ruins the building. It’s visually easy to look at. Even the back side is nice in it’s simplicity. It has clean details and materials. I like it.