The broadmoor SPENCER PENROSE'S CREATION.

• Author: STEVENS, EASTLAKE
• Position: Brief Article - Company Profile

the story is told that Spencer Penrose - who made a fortune milling gold at Cripple Creek, then a larger one by founding the Utah Copper Co. - was trotting his horse down Cascade Avenue in Colorado Springs when he realized he was thirsty. It was 1913. No teetotaler Penrose, still on horseback, trotted right into the bar at the Antlers Hotel Manages at the Antlers then the finest hotel in the Springs, were not amused. They asked that both horse and rider leave the premises. But upon his exit. Penrose vowed he would build a hotel where both he and the horse could be served at the bar. Five years later, he threw open the doors of the Broadmoor.

No one has been able to prove or disprove that story. Still it may be apocryphal. Its far more likely that the Broadmoors 1918 opening was a result of Penrose and his wife Julie's worldwide travels - and the couples propensity for long stays in resort hotels. They believed that Colorado Springs, suffering through an economic downturn during World War 1, needed a fancy place where the rich could hunker down in luxury.

Writer Lucius Beeber reported in his 1965 volume The Big Spenders that the hotel never made a dime in Penroses lifetime simply because its good-natured owner "allowed it to be turned into a nest of thieves, moochers, spongers, and incompetent pensioners."

Today, the picture is very different.

First, ownership has changed although the Penrose name still resounds. The Oklahoma Publishing Company, chaired by Edward L. Gaylord - who has close ties to Colorado Springs - bought a controlling, 80 percent stake in the Broadmoor during the late 1980s. The remaining 20 percent is owned by the El Pomar Foundation, which was established by Penrose.

And someone's making money nowadays.

"Our yearly average of occupancy is 74 percent," says Dennis Lesko, vice president of marketing. "In a large hotel it takes an occupancy of 54 percent to make money."

Occupancy in January through April averages about 40 percent, he said, but since the was designed by Donald Ross and opened in 1918. Robert Trent Jones designed the second, and the third was laid out by Arnold Palmer and Ed Seay...