A new hotel under construction just outside the Air Force Academy’s north gate is on schedule to open late next year, but other parts of the surrounding development have been delayed as inflation and interest rates have surged.
Dan Schnepf, CEO of Blue & Silver Development Partners, which is developing the 51-acre True North Commons project that includes the hotel, a new visitor center for the academy, an office park and land for retail and restaurants, is planning to turn over the visitor center building to the academy in May and open the hotel in November 2024. The academy will then install exhibits and operate the center after it opens in mid-2025.
GE Johnson Construction Co. began construction on both buildings in June 2022; the visitor center is about half complete while the hotel is 45% complete, putting both on schedule for completion next year, said Eric Smith, director of development for Blue & Silver Development. Roads and utilities are nearly two-thirds complete. More than 250 construction workers are working on the two projects along with road and utility work needed for each building.
The visitor center is the centerpiece of True North Commons and will replace the more than 40-year-old current center west of the cadet area that has attracted far fewer visitors in the wake of tightened security at the academy after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The new center is outside the academy’s security gate and thus won’t be subject to the academy’s security restrictions; it is expected to draw the 1 million annual visitors that the current center attracted before 9/11, he said.
“This is a transformational project for the academy,” said Mark Hille, president of the Air Force Academy Foundation and the academy’s Association of Graduates, which has provided $16 million and is raising another $20 million for the hotel and visitor center project.
“By moving the center outside the north gate, it will make a huge difference in our visitor count, and the hotel will generate $10 million a year (in 2018 dollars) for the foundation once the bonds are paid off.”
The center, designed with a roof that looks like a wing in flight, is named for retired Lt. Gen. Bradley Hosmer, the first academy graduate to serve as the institution’s superintendent and top graduate in the school’s first graduating class. The exhibits in the new center will be designed to show visitors a day in the life of cadets and their journey from arrival to graduation, reflecting academics, military training, athletics, research and other elements of a cadet’s education.
Carlos Cruz-Gonzalez, the academy’s director of logistics, engineering and force protection, said the Air Force expects to sign a contract next month with a partnership of Idaho-based constructor Nasco and Washington, D.C.-based design firm Gallagher & Associates to design, fabricate and install the center’s exhibits. Gallagher designed exhibits for the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum that opened in downtown Colorado Springs three years ago.
The timetable for that work is still being negotiated, but Cruz-Gonzalez said the academy expects to open the 32,000-square-foot center in mid-2025. He said the academy is looking at converting the current visitor center as a home for its band, among other options.
Lisa Neener, the academy’s director of visitor experience and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) outreach, said exhibits should be designed by early next year, built or manufactured after that and installed after the building is completed in May. She said exhibits will use technology and “experiential storytelling,” such as employing virtual reality to allow visitors to experience a cadet jumping out of an aircraft in a parachute jump, for example.
The facility is the last of five projects in Colorado Springs to be completed under the City for Champions initiative, which includes the Olympic & Paralympic Museum and Weidner Field downtown, the William J. Hybl Sports Medicine and Performance Center at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs and Robson Arena at Colorado College. The projects were partly financed through sales tax rebates under Colorado’s Regional Tourism Act.
Plans for the rest of True North Commons have changed significantly since more than $400 million in bonds were sold by underwriter RBC Capital Markets in January 2022 to finance the visitor center and hotel. Those bonds are expected to be repaid with revenue and taxes generated by the center, hotel, office park, retail and restaurants built there but delays in the office, retail and restaurant parts of the project may require a bond restructuring.
“The biggest problem is that the economy has changed we since we started this project. The biggest challenge is getting everything built,” Schnepf said.
“Property tax from the office complex and retail (including restaurants) was to fund 38% of the bond repayment. But because of COVID, the downturn in the economy and increased costs, the rents we have to generate from the retail and office parts have risen” and thus fewer potential tenants are currently interested in the project.
Schnepf said “significant interest” remains for the retail parcels in True North Commons, but the number of potential tenants has dwindled from 45 to five and the space those tenants are interested in taking has dropped from 30,000 square feet to 10,000 square feet. Construction of the retail area probably will begin soon with a planned opening in 2025, since retailers and restaurants don’t want to open before the visitor center opens.
Groundbreaking for the office complex has been delayed from this spring to next year with completion expected in 2026. An 80,000- to 160,000-square-foot building is planned and will be built by a new developer after Denver-based Koelbel & Co. withdrew from the project earlier this year. Blue & Silver Development has signed a letter of interest with a new developer, which cannot be identified until a final agreement is in place, Schnepf said.
An anchor tenant for the office complex, and up to six other companies affiliated with it, are working with the new developer to come up with early plans for the building and another three additional potential tenants have shown interest, Schnepf said. The Air Force Research Laboratory, the service’s research and development arm based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, also has indicated interest in leasing space for a western U.S. location, he said.
“There is a lot of interest because the Air Force Academy is the No. 1 undergraduate research institution in the nation, and they have a hypersonic wind tunnel (one of just a handful worldwide and the only one at an undergraduate university),” Schnepf said.
“There are 200-plus defense contractors who do significant (research) work at the academy, solving real-world problems in cyber and space. That kind of work usually happens at the graduate level.”
While the visitor center is the focus of the project, the nine-story Hotel Polaris at the U.S. Air Force Academy, will be the largest part of development and the first to open. With 375 rooms, the hotel will be the city’s second largest after The Broadmoor and designed with the intent of winning a four-diamond rating from AAA, which is held by just four other local hotels and is the second highest awarded by the group. The Broadmoor is the only local five-diamond property.
“The North Star, also known as Polaris, seemed like the perfect inspiration for this new, innovative hotel,” said Tom Luersen, president of Greenwood Village-based CoralTree Hospitality, which owns the Magnolia chain and will manage Hotel Polaris. The hotel will be owned by a subsidiary of Provident Resources Group, a Louisiana-based nonprofit that specializes in helping government agencies complete large projects with public-private partnerships.
The name of the hotel could change since the Air Force Academy Foundation — which will own the building after bonds that financed the project are paid off in 10-12 years — could sell naming rights to an individual or nonprofit, Schnepf said.
CoralTree last month began booking groups and meetings beginning in January 2025, and Schnepf said interest is high from aerospace, technology, space and cybersecurity companies as well as academy graduates for reunions, weddings and promotion ceremonies.
The hotel will feature 26,000 square feet of meeting space spread among 8,000- and 6,000-square-foot ballrooms and a series of meeting rooms that combined could accommodate up to 1,500 conference participants.
The centerpiece of the hotel will be two flight simulators — the only simulators in a U.S. hotel — designed to reproduce an aircraft flight deck with seats, throttles, switches, pedals and yoke from original parts of a Boeing 737 NG jet. The west side of the hotel also will feature a large sun deck, outdoor pool, firepits, outdoor game area and rooftop lawn area that Schnepf said is designed to host weddings and other special events.
The hotel, which will have unobstructed views of the academy campus, Pikes Peak and the Front Range, will be connected to the visitor center by a pedestrian walkway over North Gate Boulevard. Other hotel amenities include a full-service restaurant, a 1950s-themed diner, another full-service restaurant and bar on the ninth floor, a poolside café serving burgers and similar food. A full-service spa, fitness center and pantry/gift shop also will be available for hotel guests.
“I couldn’t be more proud of our views to the west, north and south,” Schnepf said during a tour of the hotel construction after a June 23 “topping off” ceremony, where construction workers raised and secured the final steel beam for the building.
