Hotel from King's "The Shining" is raising $300 million for a renovation for horror movie fans
Kyiv • UNN
The Stanley Hotel, which inspired Stephen King, is planning a large-scale reconstruction with the help of municipal bonds. The project will include a horror museum, a film archive and a new event center.
The hotel that inspired Stephen King to write his bestseller "The Shining" has turned to the municipal bond market to pay for a large-scale renovation in an attempt to consolidate its status in the film industry, especially among horror film fans, Bloomberg reports, writes UNN.
Details
The new owners of the Stanley Hotel, located in Estes Park in the US state of Colorado, approximately 64 km from Boulder, plan to borrow approximately $300 million this month to expand their facilities, bond documents show. Most of the offer, which will be issued through a state body, is tax-exempt and will be backed by revenue generated by the hotel, as well as other sources.
The project, which includes a new event center, is the result of ten years of planning by the state and the hotel owner, as well as cultural and film organizations, aimed at attracting more tourists to the region. Part of the goal is to use the planned relocation of the Sundance Film Festival to Boulder in 2027 from Utah.
The Stanley is an independent 196-room hotel that opened in 1909 and is listed on the US National Register of Historic Places. Its campus covers more than 40 acres (16 ha) with amenities including outdoor pools, a spa, restaurants and a concert hall. Located near the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park, it is the only full-service hotel in the area.
King and his wife stayed at the hotel for one night in 1974 and had an unusual experience, being the only guests as it was closing for the winter the next day, the author recalls on his website. The empty hotel seemed to him a good place for a ghost story, but it was a nightmare he had that night - his then young son screaming as he was chased by a fire hose through the hotel corridors - that started the story of "The Shining."
The book, which was made into a film starring Jack Nicholson in 1980, tells the story of a writer who, along with his family, is hired to oversee a remote haunted hotel in the winter and gradually goes insane. The exterior of the hotel shown in the film is in Oregon.
"The Stanley is a wonderful old hotel," King said through his representative. "For me, it's full of ghosts."
The hotel will add 65 guest rooms, build a new lobby and arrival area, and an event center with the proceeds from the debt sale.
The center will be dedicated to the horror genre with a museum and film archive with exhibits and events curated by Blumhouse Productions, which produced films such as Halloween and Paranormal Activity in 2018. Exhibits will include sets and artifacts from the films, according to bond documents.
It will also have an auditorium for 1,100 people, a 176-seat theater and a speakeasy - an illegal bar.
The renovated hotel will continue the annual Sundance Directors Lab program, which moved to Stanley in 2024 and features up-and-coming and established directors.