For the leaders of downtown Denver’s newest hotel Populus, this week marked the birth of a new landmark.
The building near Civic Center Park was built to resemble Colorado’s aspen trees — known by its scientific name as “populus tremuloides” — and be an example for the real estate industry that sustainable development can also be profitable.
“This will be one of the great icons in the new West,” Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said Thursday at the hotel’s ribbon cutting ceremony.
“Not just because of what it looks like,” he said, “But because what it stands for.”
Populus opened Tuesday , offering 265 rooms within its 13 stories.
The exterior is covered in paneling shaped like a cluster of tree trunks and arched windows resembling scars on an aspen tree’s bark.
Like the inside of a tree, the hotel’s interior is filled with warm greens and browns, using recycled wood from snow fences in Wyoming or damaged trees from beetle-infestations. Mushroom-leather panels hang over the lobby bar and the floor is covered in concrete sprinkled with creek pebbles.
“I think we nailed it,” said George Prine, the hotel’s general manager.
The hotel, 240 14th St., has been under construction since 2022 on the site of where Colorado’s first gas station was built.
It claims to be the first “carbon positive” hotel in the U.S. with eco-friendlier practices in its construction from using recycled materials to having design features to lower air conditioning costs, or by promising to plant trees for every night booked and composting the food from its restaurants for local parks and farmers.
Someone proposed trademarking the hotel’s “One night, one tree” program, Prine said, but the team decided against it to allow other hotels to follow suit.
“We're not trademarking anything. Imagine if another hotel wants to start doing that. Imagine if five hotels, imagine that a big brand company wants to start doing that,” Prine said. “How awesome is that gonna be for our planet?”
Many of them will be planted in Gunnison County, which has suffered from fires and beetle infestations harming its tree supply, Prine explained.
Room prices range from $299 up to $900 a night, though some nights on its website are available for $194.
It developed by Urban Villages, the Denver real estate firm with a mission of activating urban neighborhoods and implementing more sustainable practices in construction. Urban Villages redeveloped Lower Downtown’s Sugar Block and turned Larimer Square into a pedestrian-only destination.
The building was designed by acclaimed architect Jeanne Gang and her firm Studio Gang, who’s also working with Denver on redeveloping Civic Center Park’s Greek Amphitheater. Populus will be managed by Aparium Hotel Group.
Since last spring, Denver onlookers have been able to see the hotel’s aspen tree exterior paneling as the exterior wrapped up construction first .
With this week’s opening, now people can get a look inside.
Ground floor dining, café and a grand staircase
Hotel guests are greeted at the entrance by arched windows spanning approximately 30 feet in height, meant to be a lens inviting streetwalkers to the hotel’s check-in desk, restaurant and Little Owl coffee shop.
The ground floor restaurant is named Pasque, after the purple wildflower found in Colorado meadows. Its interior design took inspiration from the forest floor. There’s not many straight lines in the building, evoking how lines in the natural world are intrinsically curved.
Pasque serves breakfast, lunch and dinner using seasonal ingredients sourced across the Mountain West region and wines from small family-owned companies, the hotel said.
Populus hired Executive Chef Ian Wortham to lead its restaurants, including its rooftop concept. He used to work at Frasca Food and Wine in Boulder and Tavernetta along 16th Street Mall. The hotel’s director of food and beverage tasked with sourcing local producers for the menu is Curtis Landrum, also from Tavernetta.
There’s also a Little Owl coffee shop, a Denver-based roastery with locations on 17th Street and Blake Street.
Aspen eye windows offer portal views of downtown (and keep building cooler)
One of the most distinctive features of the hotel are its arched windows shaped to be like the scars on aspen tree barks called the “aspen eyes.”
They offer a framed view of downtown Denver and Colorado’s institutional government buildings — while giving each room a unique configuration.
They’re also built with curved overhangs to allow natural light into the hotel while also providing a shade to keep cooling energy costs down. It serves as a way to clean the building by guiding rainwater down its walls.
The hotel rooms have window seating within some of the arches for guests to lay down and read a book, or take a nap.
A bathroom in the suite has a tall bathtub in between a window arch, situated inside of a large walk-in shower.
Rooftop views
The top floor is home to Stellar Jay, a live-fire restaurant and cocktail bar.
Much of the restaurant is inside offering more views of downtown and the Rocky Mountains. But there is also an outdoor terrace with seating as well as a private dining room for special occasions.
The restaurant was named after a Colorado bird known for feeding off Pasque wildflowers, a nod to the hotel’s downstairs restaurant. The menu will feature wild game, farmed meats and fresh seafood.
The hotel said it would put all food waste from the restaurants through a “biodigester” to create compost or fertilizer products to give back to local farms and Civic Center Park Conservancy.
The restaurants aim to not only create a farm-to-table dining experience, but also bring the table back to the farm.
Many of these sustainable practices are meant to be both environmentally conscious and also cost effective, officials said. Some of the interior walls have been left as bare concrete to not add to the carbon effects of adding a coating.
This project seeks to activate the area by bringing some nature into a recovering downtown, said Grant McCargo, CEO of Urban Villages, while also being environmentally friendly.
“One of our challenges in the real estate industry is we don’t think that way,” he said. “We lack imagination and it’s an industry that’s too comfortable for just doing the same thing over and over again.”
Now, only time will tell if Populus’ philosophies will take root.
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