The Stanley Hotel became Estes Park’s most famous tourist attraction (outside the nearby national park) from the time it opened as a wellness retreat. The hotel, established by Kodak cofounder F.O. Stanley, brought the rich and famous to the Rockies in the early 1900s. Years later, the hotel gained renewed popularity after horror writer Stephen King used a night’s stay at the Stanley as his inspiration for The Shining.

Now, the hotel known for its history and hauntings will enter another new phase. The Colorado Education and Cultural Facilities Authority will spend $1 million to officially take over the property. After securing the lease, the CECFA will turn the Stanley Hotel into the Stanley Film Center.

The CECFA plans to turn the hotel into an interactive center where filmmakers can use the space to practice their craft. While the Stanley has hosted concerts at it opera hall for over a century, the center will also add small venues for multiple concerts and screenings. The hotel will also lean on its association to The Shining and host a museum of horror film history. The museum will also celebrate non-horror films that are tied to Colorado like 1994’s Dumb and Dumber, which filmed scenes at the Stanley itself.

The Stanley Film Center project has been talked about since 2015–it was even approved for state funding that year–but ran into multiple delays regarding the hotel’s current owner, the Grand Heritage Hotel Group. John Cullen, an Estes Park resident, manages the Grand Heritage Hotel Group and came up with the idea of turning the iconic hotel into a film center almost a decade ago. However, issues over the hotel’s sale price and who exactly would buy the property delayed action until after the COVID pandemic motivated Grand Heritage to sell.

After getting a $46 million grant from Colorado’s Regional Tourism Act and permission to buy and manage the property from the Colorado General Assembly, CEFCA outbid an Arizona-based nonprofit for the hotel in October 2024. The additional $1 million granted by the Colorado Economic Development Commision for the project will help CEFCA create $475 million worth of investment bonds. These bonds, inssued by the Stanley Partnership for Art Culture and Education, will fund most of the land acquisition and new construction.

The film center has a deadline of December 31, 2028 but won’t begin construction until late spring at the earliest. The project has already won the support of film producer Blumhouse, who teamed with the Stanley in October 2024 to create film-inspired haunted houses based on Freaky, Happy Death Day, The Purge, and Insidious. Blumhouse has signed on to be a partner in bringing the horror museum to life.

As nearby Boulder may soon become the host to the Sundance Film Festival, the Stanley has leveraged its own connections to the festival. The Stanley Hotel has also hosted the Sundance Institute’s Directors Lab in May of 2024, and should Boulder win Sundance, investors hope that the film festival will be one of the buyers of the bonds.

While the plans for the film center are ambitious, the CECFA wants to integrate the Stanley Hotel, not replace it. The 60,000-square foot Stanley Film Center will be all new construction. Meanwhile, some of the CECFA bond money will fund the addition of more hotel rooms to the Stanley and a renovation of the main guest lobby. Everything Coloradans already love about the Stanley, from the candlelit night tours to the Frozen Dead Guy in the Ice House, will remain.

The Stanley Hotel acquisition marks the first time that CECFA, which was created by the Colorado legislature in 1981 to fund cultural projects around the state, has funded its own project. CECFA isn’t a state agency despite being tax exempt, using a governor-appointed Board of Directors, and needing approval from the Colorado General Assembly to do business. Rather, CECFA is a bank that operates in the same manner as the US Postal Service: it funds itself without tax dollars like any other business but operates under the direct supervision of the government.

CECFA has previously funded the construction of the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, the 2018 renovation of the Denver Art Museum, the main lodge at the YMCA of the Rockies, and dormatories and activity centers at the University of Denver. CECFA has also backed projects in 25 other states and issued over $7.6 billion in funding bonds.