Construction crews at the Stanley Hotel are placing steel every 28 minutes as they race to finish a $60 million horror film museum and event center months ahead of schedule. The nearly 70,000-square-foot addition, anchored by Blumhouse Productions and now backed by Live Nation as its live entertainment partner, was originally expected to wrap in late 2028 but is now tracking three and a half months ahead of that timeline, with exterior building shells targeted for completion by Christmas.
The accelerated pace comes as welcome news for a project that has disrupted the historic hotel’s peak tourism season with dynamite blasting, steel laying and concrete work, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette. Mark Heller, executive director of the Colorado Educational and Cultural Facilities Authority, said the construction disruption will be overcome, per the same report. Warm winters have helped keep the project moving, with shutdowns totaling just three weather days so far, the Gazette reports.
A Design Built to Match the Hotel’s Historic Look
Saunders Construction Inc. is serving as general contractor and MOA Architecture as designer, engineering the facility to match the historic hotel’s red-roof and white-clapboard aesthetic, according to BizWest. The firms were selected as part of a design-build partnership for the first phase of the project, which broke ground in September 2025. That groundbreaking ceremony, which Hoodline covered in its report on the Stanley’s transformation, included Governor Jared Polis, Blumhouse CEO Jason Blum, and local officials.
The expansion includes 65 additional rooms alongside the event space and horror film museum, which Blumhouse Productions will curate. The studio behind horror franchises including “The Purge,” “Insidious,” “M3GAN,” and “Obsession” is expected to draw 350,000 visitors a year to the museum once it opens. Live Nation has now signed on as the primary partner to organize concerts at the center’s new 1,000-seat performance venue, joining Blumhouse as a primary anchor tenant, according to the Estes Valley Voice.
Public Money Behind a Private Landmark
The Stanley Partnership for Art, Culture and Education LLC — also known as SPACE, and a subsidiary of the Colorado Educational and Cultural Facilities Authority — owns the hotel after the state bond issuer purchased it in a $400 million deal in 2025. That sale was made possible when the Colorado General Assembly amended state statutes in May 2024 to allow CECFA to directly own real estate for the first time in its 44-year history, a change detailed by the Estes Valley Voice’s reporting on the expansion…