Tim White, left, stands with Devin Visciano in front of three horse skulls found in the basement of the City Hotel. “Your horses were like dogs. They were your lifeblood. So, most farmers and ranchers, when their horse died, everybody kept the head.” (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)
Castle Rock’s oldest building could soon become part of its newest hotel.
Tim White, CEO of White Development and a former mayor of Castle Rock, is planning to incorporate the two-story building at 415-419 N. Perry St. into a 33-room hotel.
“You’ve got to have a town that’s very open minded to do that, and Castle Rock right now is that way,” White said.
White, who turns 75 this year, was mayor from 1980 to 1984, and said he’s owned the former Perry Street building since 1997. The structure dates to 1874, when it was known as Harris Hotel. It was eventually renamed to City Hotel by a later owner.
“It was kind of the central hub. Doctors came from Denver and everybody would come to see the doctor on the day he was there, the dentist or the veterinarian,” said Devin Visciano, partner at White Development.
The site is designated as a historic landmark by the town. Demolition is not allowed unless the building is “unsaveable,” per Visciano. The proposed renovations have to go before the town’s Historic Preservation Board, a process that includes public hearings, a city spokeswoman said.
The property is vacant. In recent years, it has been used as apartments.
A 1900 photo of the hotel. (Courtesy Douglas County Historical Society)
But White and Visciano have a grander future in mind. Their plans call for the roughly 3,600-square-foot building to be renovated into a restaurant dining room, which in turn will be part of a new four-story hotel built around it.
“You can have the old structure accent the new or you can have the new structure accent the old. And what we’re trying to do here is have the old structure accent the new,” White said.
The entire site is about one-third of an acre. The existing building sits at the northeast of the site. The new one would be constructed in a “U” shape around the lot to the south, with the interior serving as a courtyard.
The second and third floors would house standard hotel rooms. The fourth level would have larger suites, along with a rooftop bar and eatery which the two hope will be connected to the ground-floor restaurant. The entire structure would encompass roughly 35,000 square feet.
In addition to the ground-floor and rooftop restaurant, there would be about 2,600 square feet of retail space. The target starting rate for standard hotel rooms would be around $300. The project will keep the City Hotel name.
“It’s kind of a unique project in the sense that the scale of the hotel isn’t the driving factor when it comes to operational revenue,” Visciano said. “You have the retail spaces, you’ve got two restaurant spaces.”
Due to the small site, White and Visciano have agreed to lease up to 50 parking spots on a city-owned lot a block away.
The project is expected to cost roughly $15 million. White and Visciano hope to have people sleeping in beds by late next year or early 2026.
The duo said the town could chip in with a 10-year, low-interest $750,000 loan, and a tax break through a special instrument called tax increment financing, where the hotel would receive the excess property tax revenue it generates, along with 50 percent of its sales tax earnings up to $1 million.
A rendering showing the renovated historic building surrounded by the new hotel structure. (Courtesy White Development)
Castle Rock, located in Douglas County, is a fast-growing city in one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation. Between the 2010 and 2020 censuses, Castle Rock’s population grew from 48,000 to 73,000.
A number of chain hotels operate just off Interstate 25 exits, but White Development’s hotel would be the first in the city’s small downtown.
“People come here for business meetings. They stay in Denver, they drive down for their meeting and they drive back, which means they’re not having lunch at a Castle Rock restaurant, they’re not staying at a Castle Rock hotel, they’re not eating dinner here. They’re not walking around and going into our shops,” White said.
White ran his own construction company, White Construction, until 2021 when he sold it, parlaying the sale into the launch of his development firm. He had worked on a number of high-profile developments such as The Source Hotel + Market in RiNo and Aurora’s Stanley Marketplace. Visciano, meanwhile, grew up in Cherry Hills Village. A lawyer by trade, he met White through a mutual friend.
White Development has a few other projects ongoing, including residential and mixed-use sites in Winter Park, along with cabins outside Joshua Tree National Park in California.
The drive to bring more outside dollars into town helped spur Castle Rock’s growth initially. For the first 75 years after the town’s founding in 1874, fewer than 1,000 people lived there. The first street lights and paved roads were constructed in the 1950s.
After graduating from Colorado State University, White came to Castle Rock in 1975 in pursuit of jobs in the construction field. When he was mayor, he said, the town had limited funds to use for services and investment, in large part because few outsiders spent their money in town. That began to change when the first outlet malls were built there in the early 1990s.
“It provided a revenue stream for the town to develop from a poor community to right now,” he said. “It’s considered one of the fastest-growing and one of the more upscale communities in the country.
“I remember when I was mayor, we built the first recreation center and you would have thought it rained gold on us.”
The City Hotel building is a living remnant of Colorado and Douglas County history, much of which has been erased as horses became cars, gold mining turned to oil drilling and towns became cities.
It was first built in the old settlement of New Memphis in 1872 by the English immigrant John Harris for his brother, Thomas. New Memphis and Castle Rock were competing to be named county seat for the nascent Douglas County.
Castle Rock won out, and New Memphis faded away. Harris then packed up his hotel around 1875, transported it on log rollers, and had it dropped where it stands today.
Correction: The square footage of the planned building has been corrected.
Tim White, left, stands with Devin Visciano in front of three horse skulls found in the basement of the City Hotel. “Your horses were like dogs. They were your lifeblood. So, most farmers and ranchers, when their horse died, everybody kept the head.” (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)
Castle Rock’s oldest building could soon become part of its newest hotel.
Tim White, CEO of White Development and a former mayor of Castle Rock, is planning to incorporate the two-story building at 415-419 N. Perry St. into a 33-room hotel.
“You’ve got to have a town that’s very open minded to do that, and Castle Rock right now is that way,” White said.
White, who turns 75 this year, was mayor from 1980 to 1984, and said he’s owned the former Perry Street building since 1997. The structure dates to 1874, when it was known as Harris Hotel. It was eventually renamed to City Hotel by a later owner.
“It was kind of the central hub. Doctors came from Denver and everybody would come to see the doctor on the day he was there, the dentist or the veterinarian,” said Devin Visciano, partner at White Development.
The site is designated as a historic landmark by the town. Demolition is not allowed unless the building is “unsaveable,” per Visciano. The proposed renovations have to go before the town’s Historic Preservation Board, a process that includes public hearings, a city spokeswoman said.
The property is vacant. In recent years, it has been used as apartments.
A 1900 photo of the hotel. (Courtesy Douglas County Historical Society)
But White and Visciano have a grander future in mind. Their plans call for the roughly 3,600-square-foot building to be renovated into a restaurant dining room, which in turn will be part of a new four-story hotel built around it.
“You can have the old structure accent the new or you can have the new structure accent the old. And what we’re trying to do here is have the old structure accent the new,” White said.
The entire site is about one-third of an acre. The existing building sits at the northeast of the site. The new one would be constructed in a “U” shape around the lot to the south, with the interior serving as a courtyard.
The second and third floors would house standard hotel rooms. The fourth level would have larger suites, along with a rooftop bar and eatery which the two hope will be connected to the ground-floor restaurant. The entire structure would encompass roughly 35,000 square feet.
In addition to the ground-floor and rooftop restaurant, there would be about 2,600 square feet of retail space. The target starting rate for standard hotel rooms would be around $300. The project will keep the City Hotel name.
“It’s kind of a unique project in the sense that the scale of the hotel isn’t the driving factor when it comes to operational revenue,” Visciano said. “You have the retail spaces, you’ve got two restaurant spaces.”
Due to the small site, White and Visciano have agreed to lease up to 50 parking spots on a city-owned lot a block away.
The project is expected to cost roughly $15 million. White and Visciano hope to have people sleeping in beds by late next year or early 2026.
The duo said the town could chip in with a 10-year, low-interest $750,000 loan, and a tax break through a special instrument called tax increment financing, where the hotel would receive the excess property tax revenue it generates, along with 50 percent of its sales tax earnings up to $1 million.
A rendering showing the renovated historic building surrounded by the new hotel structure. (Courtesy White Development)
Castle Rock, located in Douglas County, is a fast-growing city in one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation. Between the 2010 and 2020 censuses, Castle Rock’s population grew from 48,000 to 73,000.
A number of chain hotels operate just off Interstate 25 exits, but White Development’s hotel would be the first in the city’s small downtown.
“People come here for business meetings. They stay in Denver, they drive down for their meeting and they drive back, which means they’re not having lunch at a Castle Rock restaurant, they’re not staying at a Castle Rock hotel, they’re not eating dinner here. They’re not walking around and going into our shops,” White said.
White ran his own construction company, White Construction, until 2021 when he sold it, parlaying the sale into the launch of his development firm. He had worked on a number of high-profile developments such as The Source Hotel + Market in RiNo and Aurora’s Stanley Marketplace. Visciano, meanwhile, grew up in Cherry Hills Village. A lawyer by trade, he met White through a mutual friend.
White Development has a few other projects ongoing, including residential and mixed-use sites in Winter Park, along with cabins outside Joshua Tree National Park in California.
The drive to bring more outside dollars into town helped spur Castle Rock’s growth initially. For the first 75 years after the town’s founding in 1874, fewer than 1,000 people lived there. The first street lights and paved roads were constructed in the 1950s.
After graduating from Colorado State University, White came to Castle Rock in 1975 in pursuit of jobs in the construction field. When he was mayor, he said, the town had limited funds to use for services and investment, in large part because few outsiders spent their money in town. That began to change when the first outlet malls were built there in the early 1990s.
“It provided a revenue stream for the town to develop from a poor community to right now,” he said. “It’s considered one of the fastest-growing and one of the more upscale communities in the country.
“I remember when I was mayor, we built the first recreation center and you would have thought it rained gold on us.”
The City Hotel building is a living remnant of Colorado and Douglas County history, much of which has been erased as horses became cars, gold mining turned to oil drilling and towns became cities.
It was first built in the old settlement of New Memphis in 1872 by the English immigrant John Harris for his brother, Thomas. New Memphis and Castle Rock were competing to be named county seat for the nascent Douglas County.
Castle Rock won out, and New Memphis faded away. Harris then packed up his hotel around 1875, transported it on log rollers, and had it dropped where it stands today.
Correction: The square footage of the planned building has been corrected.
