Denver’s Sage Restaurant Group is riding a resurgence in the hotel industry to fuel a national growth spurt.
An affiliate of high-profile hotel developer Sage Hospitality Group, the Sage dining company is proposing five new restaurants from Denver to Philadelphia.
The expansion reflects a recovering national hotel sector in which development is taking off in the wake of rising occupancy and room rates.
To date, each of Sage’s 10 restaurants nationwide has opened in Sage-operated hotels. The five newly announced locations also will be tied to hotels. Three are in Colorado.
One of them, a yet-unnamed barbecue concept, will be part of a 165-room hotel in Fort Collins to be co-developed by Sage Hospitality and McWhinney.
A second location, a proposed 155-room hotel in Cherry Creek on the site of the former Post Office at 245 Columbine St., will include Sage’s Departure restaurant.
The third, featuring Sage’s Kachina Southwestern Grill, will anchor a 170-room hotel at 19th and Wazee streets in Lower Downtown.
Sage hasn’t yet made a decision on if it will become a hotel and restaurant partner in the proposed redevelopment of the historic Rossonian Hotel in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood.
Sage Restaurant Group, or SRG, has explored the idea of opening free-standing eateries independent of the 66 hotels managed by the parent hospitality company, but in the foreseeable future, growth will continue to be tied to hotels, said Peter Karpinski, co-founder of SRG.
Karpinski prefers the word “adjacent” instead of “inside” to describe the location of his restaurants at Sage hotels. It’s his way of differentiating SRG restaurants from other hotel eateries whose reputations sometimes skew to mediocrity.
“These guys have made hotel restaurants cool,” Restaurant Hospitality magazine said last year in an article about SRG.
“Other than San Francisco, Chicago or New York, people don’t seem to flock to ‘hotel restaurants,’ ” said restaurant consultant John Imbergamo of Denver-based The Imbergamo Group.
He said that given Sage Hospitality’s extensive hotel portfolio, SRG “doesn’t need to open freestanding restaurants, but I don’t think they would have any trouble doing it.”
Karpinski said SRG is eyeing “a couple of downtown Denver locations” for its Urban Farmer steakhouse brand, which has attracted favorable reviews in Portland, Ore., and Cleveland.
All of the Sage restaurants have focused on using local farms and ranches to supply their food.
Steve Raabe: 303-954-1948, sraabe@denverpost.com or twitter.com/steveraabedp
