A woman walks down to the grand room in the lobby of the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Conference Center in Aurora during the opening on Dec. 18, 2018. It is Colorado’s largest hotel. (RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post)
Yet another judge has denied an attempt by Colorado’s largest hotel to lower its tax bill.
The Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center, which is also Adams County’s top taxpayer, has 1,500 rooms west of Denver International Airport and plans to add 450 more. Its 330,000 square feet of convention space hosted President Donald Trump in October.
The sprawling hotel opened in 2018. It has had tax-related tiffs with Adams County since.
For its first property tax year, 2019, the county’s assessor valued it at $676 million. Its owner, Ryman Hospitality Properties, appealed that decision to a county board, a state board, the Colorado Court of Appeals and the Colorado Supreme Court. It lost every time.
That last loss came in June 2023. Within a few months, it was again suing over a valuation.
So, over the course of three days last October — a week before the Trump rally — lawyers for Ryman and Adams County made their case to Judge Art Hernandez in Brighton. Their arguments centered on competing methodologies for calculating a hotel’s value.
The county’s approach, commonly called the “Rushmore” method, is to determine a hotel’s total value and then subtract management fees, franchise fees, furniture, fixtures and equipment. Ryman prefers an approach that subtracts those same fees and items, as well as all income from the resort’s restaurants, spa and gift shops. That revenue comes from business activity, not real estate, and should not be included in property values, Ryman believes.
Seven months after the trial, Hernandez issued a 24-page verdict for the government.
“(Ryman) has not met its burden of proof and has failed to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the valuation of $753,700,000…was erroneous,” he wrote May 7.
Hernandez noted that the Rushmore method has long been used to appraise hotels but that some courts elsewhere in the country have begun to criticize it. Still, Ryman had the burden to prove that the Rushmore method was flawed, and did not do so, the judge wrote. For those reasons, he rejected Ryman’s request to value the Gaylord at $530 million.
“We have no comment at this time,” said Michael Miller, an attorney for Ryman Hospitality.
Attorneys and spokespeople for Adams County also declined to comment on the ruling.
A woman walks down to the grand room in the lobby of the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Conference Center in Aurora during the opening on Dec. 18, 2018. It is Colorado’s largest hotel. (RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post)
Yet another judge has denied an attempt by Colorado’s largest hotel to lower its tax bill.
The Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center, which is also Adams County’s top taxpayer, has 1,500 rooms west of Denver International Airport and plans to add 450 more. Its 330,000 square feet of convention space hosted President Donald Trump in October.
The sprawling hotel opened in 2018. It has had tax-related tiffs with Adams County since.
For its first property tax year, 2019, the county’s assessor valued it at $676 million. Its owner, Ryman Hospitality Properties, appealed that decision to a county board, a state board, the Colorado Court of Appeals and the Colorado Supreme Court. It lost every time.
That last loss came in June 2023. Within a few months, it was again suing over a valuation.
So, over the course of three days last October — a week before the Trump rally — lawyers for Ryman and Adams County made their case to Judge Art Hernandez in Brighton. Their arguments centered on competing methodologies for calculating a hotel’s value.
The county’s approach, commonly called the “Rushmore” method, is to determine a hotel’s total value and then subtract management fees, franchise fees, furniture, fixtures and equipment. Ryman prefers an approach that subtracts those same fees and items, as well as all income from the resort’s restaurants, spa and gift shops. That revenue comes from business activity, not real estate, and should not be included in property values, Ryman believes.
Seven months after the trial, Hernandez issued a 24-page verdict for the government.
“(Ryman) has not met its burden of proof and has failed to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the valuation of $753,700,000…was erroneous,” he wrote May 7.
Hernandez noted that the Rushmore method has long been used to appraise hotels but that some courts elsewhere in the country have begun to criticize it. Still, Ryman had the burden to prove that the Rushmore method was flawed, and did not do so, the judge wrote. For those reasons, he rejected Ryman’s request to value the Gaylord at $530 million.
“We have no comment at this time,” said Michael Miller, an attorney for Ryman Hospitality.
Attorneys and spokespeople for Adams County also declined to comment on the ruling.
