Scott Marr has scrapped plans to build a boutique hotel in downtown Steamboat Springs, opting instead to create The Emerald — a mix of luxury townhomes and retail space with stunning views of the mountain it is named after.  

“The economics of building a hotel downtown didn’t work, which is why there’s no hotels in downtown being built,” Marr said earlier this week. “By the time you meet all the city’s requirements — you know having one parking spot for one space — and the height requirements and you go through all that, you just can’t make the numbers work.”

Marr said construction for The Emerald is slated to begin in the next couple of weeks. When finished, the project, located at the parking lot between Yampa Street and Lincoln Avenue, will include five luxury rooftop condominiums and retail space on the ground level. Marr said one of the homes in the project has already been purchased by a buyer.

“Most of the condominiums that have been built downtown are around 2,000 square feet, so I would say these are for somebody that wants to be a full-time resident, as opposed to a vacation rental,” Marr said. “But hey, people can do whatever they want with it once they buy it.”

Each of the condominiums will offer 3,500 square feet of living space, a rooftop deck and elevators. Each unit also has a two-car garage that will be accessed from the alleyway and provides another entrance to owner’s condominium.  Marr said the units feature multiple bedrooms, full kitchens and lots of high-end features throughout.

The project also includes six retail spaces that will offer 3,000 square feet of commercial space on the ground level. He said each commercial unit is small, around 400 square feet, and he anticipates the spots will be used as offices or small retail operations.

“They’re small spaces, so I’m imagining they’ll be offices,” Marr said. “Probably professional offices, maybe a yoga studio, a personal trainer or a space for somebody to do physical therapy.”

Marr said he has been working with the city of Steamboat Springs to meet the criteria they wanted to see in the project and came up with something everybody agreed was viable.

Marr has owned the parking lot located between Yampa Street and Lincoln for several years and had planned to build a hotel in that location prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. He said the pandemic and other factors, including the price tag for building the hotel that rose from $20 million to more than $30 million dollars, convinced him to change direction for the project.

“We were ready to go when the pandemic hit,” said Marr, who spent 45 years in the hospitality industry and previously owned the Holiday Inn in Steamboat Springs. “Once the pandemic hit, and things settled out, the prices went through the roof and that’s kind of when we made the decision that doing the condominium route was better than building a hotel.”