Vivo Living Longmont: Developers eye hotels for conversion to apartments

HOSPITALITY & TOURISM  APRIL 14, 2024 10:13:42 AM

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Developers eye hotels for conversion to apartments

Another aging Best Western, this one in Boulder’s neighboring city to the north, was also a recent target for adaptive reuse.

The Best Western Plus Plaza in Longmont, a 210-room inn that had welcomed guests for four decades, shuttered about two years ago following its sale to a developer that specializes in transforming hotels into apartments. Vivo Apt Longmont LLC, a subsidiary of California-based Vivo Living, bought the hotel at 1900 Ken Pratt Blvd. in 2021 from CO Hotel LLC, an affiliate of Chester, Virginia-based Shamin Hotels, for $15.4 million.

Shamin took over the property in 2018 from longtime owner Pratt Management Co. At the time, Shamin said it planned to renovate the hotel and the 36,000-square-foot Plaza Convention Center, which it had agreed to manage under a deal struck with owner Chernoff Boulder Properties LLC. But less than a year after taking over management duties, Shamin exercised a clause in its contract to stop managing the convention center, and bookings were halted. 

In the years since the hotel’s sale, Vivo Living has transformed the site into Vivo Living Longmont, an apartment complex with 189 studios and 21 one-bedroom units. Of those, more than two dozen are rented at below-market rates. 

Longmont City Councilwoman Marcia Martin told the Longmont Times-Call in 2022 that the complex helps provide the community with much-needed affordable workforce housing.

“I think we are done with the dream of single-family houses with yards,” Martin told the newspaper. “This is a little bit like a walkable urban neighborhood. There’s a gym. There’s a picnic area. There are places to barbecue.”