AURORA | Building a 2-million-square-foot, 1,500-room hotel resort and conference center has been a daunting process on Aurora’s northeastern edge.
But as crews finish work on Aurora’s hulking Gaylord Rockies Resort and Convention Center, a short drive away a team of Gaylord employees are tackling an equally-daunting task: Staffing the massive resort in time for a late 2018 opening.
The man leading that hiring push is Rick Medwedeff, the new general manager of Gaylord Rockies, who came on board a few weeks ago.
Medwedeff, who comes to Gaylord from the JW Marriott Marco Island Beach Resort in Marco Island, Fla., said that between visits to the construction site and getting to know his staff, his biggest focus so far has been on hiring the right people.
“That will be, and that is what I am focused on right now,” he said.
Colorado’s low unemployment rate has some sectors of the economy scrambling to find qualified employees, but Medwedeff said that hasn’t been a problem for Gaylord. The project is the biggest hotel under construction in the country right now, and Medwedeff said that especially when it comes to internal Marriott candidates looking to move up, that stature is a big draw.
“That is going to definitely help us out, but it’s going to be an ongoing effort,” he said.
In a statement announcing Medwedeff’s hiring, Mike Stengel, senior vice president of Gaylord Hotels Operations and Marriott’s Convention Hotel Strategy, said Medwedeff is a good fit for the Aurora position.
“It takes a very accomplished hotelier to lead one of Gaylord Hotels’ large-scale resort and convention centers,” he said. “Rick is a perfect fit for Gaylord Rockies with 35 years of experience and success focused on finance, operations, sales strategies and redevelopment for some of Marriott’s more complex resort properties.”
Opening the Gaylord Rockies will be the first time Medwedeff has overseen the opening of a brand new hotel as general manager, but he has been involved in two before, in Washington D.C. and Richmond, Va.
Those openings prepped him for the challenge of managing a hotel from outside of a hotel, something that often means you don’t have the same resources you will when the hotel is up and running.
Today, Medwedeff is getting set for the opening from Gaylord’s temporary sales office a short distance away from the construction site.
Medwedeff said he expects the opening to go smoothly, in large part thanks to the advance work the sales staff has already done.
Today, close to a year before the hotel actually opens its doors, Gaylord Rockies already has booked more than 627,000 room nights. Medwedeff said that includes some conventions booked out as far as 2027, and 85 percent of the conventions booked so far are bringing their convention to Colorado for the first time ever.
Medwedeff said the sales staff, which has been working for years from that small, temporary office near Tower Road and Peña Boulevard, has laid important groundwork with that sales push.
“When we do open the doors we are going to have a substantial amount of business already on the books,” he said.
Still, Medwedeff said he feels a degree of pressure when it comes to the opening. Not only is the project a massive one, but it’s one city officials have fought to make happen for nearly a decade.
After the city’s boisterous 2010 announcement that Gaylord Rockies was coming to Aurora with the help of about $300 million in tax incentives, the project seemed to stall multiple times. But after a court fight with a group of Denver hotels, a new developer and Marriott jumping on to manage the Gaylord brand, the project finally broke down in late 2015.
Medwedeff said the importance of the project to Aurora isn’t lost on him, but he takes comfort knowing there are already all of those reservations before clients even get to see the swank new resort.
As construction winds down, Medwedeff said he is looking forward to more-frequent visits to the site so he can get to know the building a little better — a daunting task with a hotel like Gaylord Rockies.
“A property of that size, close to 2 million square feet, it will take a while to learn the nooks and crannies,” he said.