A new hotel under construction just outside the Air Force Academy’s north gate is set to open late next year, but other parts of the surrounding development have been delayed as inflation and interest rates have risen.
Dan Schnepf, CEO of Blue & Silver Development Partners, which develops the True North Commons project of 51 acres which includes the hotel, a new reception center for the Academy, an office park and a land for retail and restaurants, plans to hand over the building from the reception center to the Academy in May and open the hotel in November 2024. mid-201.
GE Johnson Construction Co. began construction of both buildings in June 2022; the visitor center is half complete while the hotel is 45% complete, putting both on schedule for next year, said Eric Smith, director of development for Blue & Silver Development. Roads and utilities are two-thirds complete. More than 250 construction workers are working on the two projects as well as the necessary road and utility works for each building.
The Visitor Center is the centerpiece of True North Commons and will replace the current more than 40-year-old center west of the Cadet Area which attracted far fewer visitors following tighter security at the academy after the 9/11 attacks.
The new center is outside the academy’s security gate and therefore will not be subject to the academy’s security restrictions; it is expected to attract the one million annual visitors the current center drew before 9/11, he said.
“This is a transformational project for the academy,” said Mark Hille, president of the Air Force Academy Foundation and Academy Alumni Association, which provided $16 million and is raising another $20 million for the hotel and visitor center project.
“Moving the center outside the North Gate will make a huge difference to our visitor numbers, 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 resembles a wing in flight, is named for retired Lt. Gen. Bradley Hosmer, the academy’s first graduate to serve as the institution’s superintendent and the school’s top freshman graduate. Exhibits at 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, director of logistics, engineering and force protection at the academy, said the Air Force plans to sign a contract next month with a partnership between Idaho-based builder Nasco and Washington, D.C.-based design firm Gallagher & Associates to design, manufacture and install the center’s exhibits. Gallagher has designed exhibits for the US Olympic & Paralympic Museum which opened in downtown Colorado Springs three years ago.
The timeline for that work is still being negotiated, but Cruz-Gonzalez said the academy plans to open the 32,000-square-foot center in mid-2025. He said the academy is considering converting the current reception center into a home for his band, among other options.
Lisa Neener, the academy’s director of visitor experience and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) outreach, said the exhibits are expected to be designed early next year, built or fabricated after that, and installed after the building is completed in May. She said the exhibits will use technology and “experiential storytelling,” such as using virtual reality to allow visitors to experience a cadet jumping out of an airplane during a parachute jump, for example.
The facility is the latest of five projects in Colorado Springs to be completed under the City for Champions initiative, which includes the Olympic and Paralympic Museum and downtown Weidner Field, the William J. Hybl Sports Medicine and Performance Center at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, and Robson Arena at Colorado College. The projects were partially funded by sales tax rebates under the Colorado 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 fund the visitor center and hotel. These bonds are expected to be repaid with the revenues and taxes generated by the center, hotel, office park, retail and restaurant areas built there, but delays in the office, retail and restaurant portions of the project may necessitate restructuring of the bonds.
“The biggest problem is that the economy has changed us since we started this project. The biggest challenge is to build everything,” Schnepf said.
“The office and retail complex property tax (including restaurants) was to fund 38% of the bond repayment. But due to COVID, the slowing economy and rising costs, the rents we have to generate from the commercial and office parts have increased” and therefore fewer potential tenants are currently interested in the project.
Schnepf said “significant interest” remains in retail lots in True North Commons, but the number of potential tenants has dropped from 45 to five and the space those tenants want to occupy has dropped from 30,000 square feet to 10,000 square feet. Construction of the shopping area will likely begin soon with an expected opening in 2025, as retailers and restaurants don’t want to open until the visitor center opens.
Groundbreaking for the office complex has been postponed 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. pulled out of 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.
A major tenant in the office complex, and up to six other companies affiliated with it, are working with the new developer to come up with preliminary plans for the building and three additional potential tenants have expressed interest, Schnepf said. The Air Force Research Laboratory, the service’s research and development arm based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, has also expressed interest in leasing space for a location in the western United States, he said.
“There’s a lot of interest because the Air Force Academy is the nation’s premier undergraduate research institution, and they have a hypersonic wind tunnel (one of the few in the world and the only one at an undergraduate university),” Schnepf said.
“There are over 200 defense contractors doing important (research) work at the academy, solving real-world problems in cyber and space. This kind of work usually occurs at the graduate level.
While the Visitor Center is at the center of the project, the US Air Force Academy’s nine-story Polaris Hotel will be the largest part of the development and the first to open. With 375 rooms, the hotel will be the second largest in the city after The Broadmoor and designed with the intention of earning a AAA Four Diamond rating, which is held by only four other local hotels and is the second highest awarded by the group. The Broadmoor is the only five-diamond local property.
“The North Star, also known as Polaris, seemed like the perfect inspiration for this innovative new hotel,” said Tom Luersen, president of Greenwood Village-based CoralTree Hospitality, which owns the Magnolia chain and will manage the Polaris Hotel. The hotel will be owned by a subsidiary of Provident Resources Group, a Louisiana-based nonprofit that specializes in helping government agencies deliver large projects with public-private partnerships.
The hotel’s name could change since the Air Force Academy Foundation — which will own the building after the bonds that funded the project are paid off in 10 to 12 years — could sell the naming rights to an individual or nonprofit, Schnepf said.
Last month, CoralTree began booking groups and meetings starting in January 2025, and Schnepf said interest was high from aerospace, technology, space and cybersecurity companies as well as academy graduates for meetings, weddings and promotion ceremonies.
The hotel will have 26,000 square feet of meeting space divided between 8,000 and 6,000 square foot ballrooms and a suite of meeting rooms that can accommodate up to 1,500 conference attendees.
The centerpiece of the hotel will be two flight simulators – the only simulators in a US hotel – designed to replicate an airplane cockpit with seats, joysticks, switches, pedals and a yoke taken from original parts of a Boeing 737 NG. The west side of the hotel will also feature a large sun deck, an outdoor pool, fire pits, an outdoor playground and a rooftop lawn that Schnepf says is designed to host weddings and other special events.
The hotel, which will offer sweeping views of the Academy campus, Pikes Peak and 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 restaurant, another full-service restaurant and bar on the ninth floor, a poolside cafe serving burgers, and similar fare. A full-service spa, fitness center, and pantry/gift shop will also be available to hotel guests.
“I couldn’t be prouder of our views to the west, north and south,” Schnepf said during a tour of the hotel’s construction after a June 23 “finishing” ceremony, in which construction workers lifted and secured the building’s final steel beam.
