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.
The project received a $46 million boost from the Colorado state Regional Tourism Act, along with a $1 million grant awarded by the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade. The Colorado Economic Development Commission approved the expansion's state awards. In exchange for that public support, the commission placed a land-use restrictive covenant on the property requiring any future owner to maintain tourism-focused operations even in the event of bond default.
Sundance's Temporary Home Faces Construction Noise
The Sundance Director's Lab, which hosts indie filmmakers and originally was held at Sundance Resort in Utah, has been held in Estes Park since 2024 after moving to the Stanley Hotel because of construction at the Utah resort. Construction noise has made the lab difficult to run this year, and the Sundance Institute may move the program back to Utah once its resort reopens — an open question that remains unresolved. The lab's presence in Colorado helped the state secure the Sundance Film Festival, which Boulder now hosts starting in 2027, a shift Hoodline detailed in its coverage of Boulder's new Sundance host role.
Faster construction could mean an earlier grand opening celebration for the Stanley Film Center, which is still expected sometime in early 2028. Big artists have reportedly been booked for that opening, though the lineup has not been detailed. Beyond concerts and hotel stays, the Stanley already earns significant revenue from its horror-themed tourism draws — the property hosted roughly 190,000 paid ghost tour participants in 2024 and sold out $100,000 worth of its immersive “Overnightmare” weekend packages in just 84 minutes, according to the Longmont Times-Call.
A Cultural Hub Beyond the Movie Museum
The Stanley's horror pedigree runs deeper than Blumhouse. The hotel, located in Estes Park, inspired Stephen King's novel “The Shining,” which was later adapted into the horror film starring Jack Nicholson. Elsewhere on the property, the International Cryonics Museum has occupied the historic ice house since August 2023 under a lease with Alcor Life Extension Foundation, displaying the liquid-nitrogen-preserved remains of “Grandpa Bredo” Morstoel — a story that inspired Colorado's Frozen Dead Guy Days festival, according to TravelPirates.
The town of Estes Park took over that festival in 2023 through its Visit Estes Park tourism district, scheduling its 2026 celebration for March 27 through 29 with coffin races, live music, and scientific demonstrations by Alcor researchers. The moves fit into a broader statewide push around film and entertainment investment, including a $5 million Film Incentive Tax Credit program created in 2024 and the January appointment of Grimshaw Sloan as Colorado Film Commissioner, a hire Hoodline covered in its report on the new Colorado film commissioner. Whether local sales tax revenues will meet Regional Tourism Act projections once the horror museum opens remains an open question officials have yet to answer.
