GRAPEVINE, Texas — Walk into the Gaylord Texan and you can take a tour of Texas that includes the Alamo, the San Antonio River Walk and Palo Duro Canyon — all within the comfort of a climate-controlled atrium.
The hotel hosts a smattering of the Lone Star State’s most famous sites and offers an indication of what Nashville, Tenn.-based Gaylord Entertainment Co. might do at the hotel it’s proposing in Aurora.
Will there be Red Rocks, or Grand Mesa, or a scaled-down version of Rocky Mountain National Park on the plains of Aurora?
If Gaylord is true to its model of building replicas of a region’s most treasured sites, that’s what could happen at the $824 million hotel complex it’s planning for Aurora.
The 1,500-room hotel and 400,000-square-foot convention center the company wants to build in Aurora is similar in size to the Gaylord Texan, which opened in 2004.
The Gaylord Texan boasts a 4.5-acre atrium divided into three sections, each depicting various aspects of the state’s history and landscape.
A stream meanders through the Riverwalk Atrium, modeled after San Antonio’s renowned River Walk.
Gaylord spent $250,000 to build and install the Treaty Oak in its Hill Country Atrium, which is a replica of the last surviving member of the Council Oaks, a grove of 14 trees that was the sacred meeting place for the Comanche and Tonkawa tribes.
At 2.5 acres, the hotel’s grandest atrium is the Lone Star, which has replicas of the Alamo and Palo Duro Canyon, complete with a covered wagon and a model railroad.
Country music is piped throughout the complex.
“We got more than a hotel and convention center,” said P.W. McCallum, executive director of the Grapevine Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We got an attraction that screams out Texas.”
Except for the heat.
Visitors can be fooled into thinking they’ve stepped outside into a beautiful, cool morning in the massive, perfectly landscaped garden, even though it’s blazing hot outside. Some even light cigarettes in the smoke-free hotel, without realizing they’re still inside.
“It’s an honest mistake,” said Martha Neibling, the hotel’s marketing director.
Restaurants, coffee shops and boutiques are scattered throughout the hotel’s main floor. It also boasts an indoor pool on one end, an outdoor pool on the other. Paradise Springs, a 10-acre outdoor water park, debuted over Memorial Day weekend.
Paradise Springs features an event lawn with croquet and shuffleboard, a Lazy River, a 27-foot-tall winding slide and a zip line. Horseshoe-shaped areas within the family lagoon are heated, but not Jacuzzi temperature — “Texas gets too hot,” Neibling explained.
The park includes three areas with private cabanas, complete with televisions, refrigerators and firepits. The pool bar and grill, as well as poolside table service, are available to guests, and large groups can rent out Paradise Springs for as many as 3,200 people.
Lori Lewis, a resident of the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb North Richland Hills, who is relocating to Florida, recently took a “staycation” at the Gaylord to celebrate her move.
“You feel like you’re away from it all,” said Lewis, who enjoyed a day sipping margaritas on the Lazy River and an evening at the Glass Cactus, the hotel’s 39,000-square-foot nightclub overlooking Lake Grapevine. “When you live in the mid-cities, you don’t want to drive to Dallas or Fort Worth.”
Margaret Jackson: 303-954-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com
