Satellite Hotel celebrates 50th anniversary Saturday in Colorado Springs
Parts of the Satellite Hotel in Colorado Springs have been mistaken for a retirement complex, an apartment building and even a restaurant, but since 1969 it has remained an enduring presence on the city skyline.
Residents, employees and staff celebrated the hotel’s 50th anniversary Saturday at its location near the intersection of Academy Boulevard and Airport Road.
The hotel consists of 241 individually owned residential condominiums, 76 hotel rooms owned by a homeowners’ association and 40 office condominiums.
The Satellite was the city’s tallest building when it opened and was at the city’s southeastern city limit.
An Air Force colonel developed the hotel as a smaller version of the famous Ilikai Hotel in Honolulu. Both buildings have three fanned sections, giving them a starlike shape, but only the Satellite has a triangular private office space section above its 12 floors.
“That triangle part is what everyone thought was a restaurant,” said Satellite spokesman Bradley Nathan. “A property management company is using it now. Because it was built like the Ilikai, it can withstand hurricane-force winds and even earthquakes.”
Nathan said the Satellite is the only one in Colorado Springs, and among the first in the state, to be built specifically as a mixed-use project.
“There are ground floor businesses and a mixture of condominiums and hotel rooms,” he said. “That makes the Satellite a very unique building. The land on which it stands was once a golf course.”
The audience celebrated the anniversary by enjoying refreshments, sharing memories and watching a slide show of construction photos. Among the guests was Charlotte Brummer, 91, who has lived in her seventh-floor condo since the building opened 50 years ago.
Brummer reflected on an archive photo taken of her standing near the construction site.
“I came out and saw the models and decided that’s where I wanted to spend the rest of my life,” she said. “And that was before they ever started building it.”
Even as development grew around the Satellite over time, it remains one of the most familiar images on the local landscape.
