Construction at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park is progressing faster than anticipated, with officials now eyeing an early 2028 opening for a major expansion that includes a horror film museum and new event space — beating the original late-2028 target by roughly three and a half months.
It has been more than a year since a state bond issuer purchased the hotel for $400 million in an effort to make it a larger tourism destination for Colorado and generate additional tax revenue. The sale included funding to expand the hotel's buildings by adding 65 rooms and developing a nearly 70,000-square-foot event space and horror film museum.
The Stanley Partnership for Art Culture and Education LLC, known as SPACE, is a subsidiary organization of The Colorado Education and Cultural Facilities Authority (CECFA) and the new owner of the hotel. The $60 million expansion project broke ground in September 2025 and received $46 million from the Colorado State Regional Tourism Act along with a $1 million grant from the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade.
"We are about three and a half months ahead of schedule," the CEO and chairman of the SPACE board told state economic officials, citing good management and conservative original scheduling. Officials are now eyeing an opening in early 2028. "Thanks to our extraordinarily warm winters for construction, we are really in a great place," he said.
The new film center will be curated by Blumhouse Productions — the studio behind major horror films such as "Obsession," "M3GAN," "The Purge," "Insidious" and more. The Blumhouse Museum itself is projected to draw 350,000 visitors per year.
Despite the encouraging pace, construction has created complications for the hotel's ongoing operations. "We are at peak construction destruction right now, unfortunately overlapping with the peak tourism season," said the executive director of CECFA, though he added that disruption should be minimized once the building's exterior shells are completed by Christmas.
Construction noise created significant challenges for the Sundance Director's Lab this year, an event that hosts independent filmmakers at the hotel each June and has been held in Estes Park since 2024 — one of the factors that helped Colorado secure the Sundance Film Festival. According to project leadership, the Sundance Institute is expected to return its director's and screenwriting lab to the Sundance Resort in Utah next year, where it was originally held before construction there prompted the temporary move to the Stanley. Sundance declined to comment.
Grand opening celebrations, for which major artists have already been booked, may also move up in light of the accelerated construction timeline.
Officials are expected to continue providing monthly updates to the Colorado Economic Development Commission as the project approaches its revised completion target.