A former church and retail space on downtown Estes Park’s Elkhorn Avenue has been converted into a chocolate factory, with a custom-built carousel added this fall. The Stanley Chocolate Factory opened Nov. 28, 2025, offering visitors chocolate-bar making and tastings; the carousel is the latest addition to the complex.
The factory is owned by John Cullen, who bought the Stanley Hotel out of bankruptcy in 1996 and has since owned roughly 50 hotels across 17 countries, according to the Denver Gazette. Cullen toured Belgium to study its chocolate tourism industry before developing the Estes Park operation. The factory offers chocolate-bar making for families and friends, as well as wine and chocolate tastings in a side room, the paper reports.
The factory occupies an extensively renovated 1909 structure that originally housed the Presbyterian Church of Estes Park, according to Estes Valley Voice. The building later became the Old Church Shops retail space and closed in 2022, the Gazette reports. Ty Ricker has said Cullen saved the building and turned it into a downtown showcase, adding that the project was completed with care rather than speed, according to the Gazette.
Earlier Lives of the Building
The factory is not the building’s first conversion from its original use. MOA Architecture says the building at 157 West Elkhorn Avenue was converted from a church into a boutique shopping mall in the 1980s. That earlier reuse preceded the current renovation into a chocolate factory.
A Carousel Built for the Mountains
The carousel opened to the public over Labor Day weekend 2026, according to the Gazette. Estes Valley Voice reports that its exact debut was Sept. 4, 2026. The 28-foot vintage-style ride was custom-made by Chance Rides of Wichita, Kansas, at a cost of more than $1 million. It is housed in a separate building that the Gazette says spans 6,500 square feet.
The carousel building was estimated to cost more than $4 million, and the Gazette’s reporting puts Cullen’s total investment in the chocolate factory project at roughly $30 million.
Financing the Historic Overhaul
Behind the scenes, Cullen restructured ownership of the property this spring. In April, per the same Estes Valley Voice account, Cullen sold the West Elkhorn Avenue property for $24.875 million to Tebo Estes LLC, owned by Boulder developer Stephen Tebo, while retaining ownership of the chocolate factory business itself and signing a 25-year lease to keep operating there. The project reportedly took four years to construct, according to the Gazette.
Address listings for the business vary across sources: an MOA architecture project page lists the factory's location as 157 West Elkhorn Avenue, while a Visit Estes Park listing gives the address as 500 Big Thompson Ave. The discrepancy between the two listings was not resolved in available reporting.
More Than Just Chocolate
Paul Halverson has said Cullen had long discussed building a chocolate factory at the hotel property, according to the Gazette. Halverson hopes the complex will serve as a Main Street anchor and benefit neighboring businesses. Plans for the broader complex include barbecue, pizza and a bar, as well as a Skyview rooftop deck with panoramic views of Rocky Mountain National Park, the Gazette reports.
The project is part of a wider set of Stanley-related developments in Estes Park. The Stanley Hotel famously inspired Stephen King’s The Shining, and the Gazette reports that a 70,000-square-foot Stanley Film Center horror museum is under construction beside the hotel, with Blumhouse Productions set to oversee it.
The chocolate venture also echoes the Stanley Hotel's other recent preservation work downtown. The hotel acquired the neighboring Church Shops building in January 2022 and announced plans for a core renovation including a new roof, new windows, mechanical upgrades, fire suppression systems and ADA-compliant elevators, according to the Estes Park Trail-Gazette. That followed the hotel's restoration of its Carriage House, a project that topped $10 million, the Trail-Gazette reported at the time.
