MOXY Denver Cherry Creek

MOXY DENVER CHERRY CREEK: A QUIRKY NEW HOTEL IN UPSCALE CHERRY CREEK NEIGHBORHOOD 

What do you think some of the early residents of Cherry Creek would think of the neighborhood now?

Moxy Denver Cherry Creek is a $35 million hotel at 240 Josephine St. that brings Marriott International’s Moxy brand hotel to Denver for the first time. Designed by Johnson Nathan Strohe, the hotel opened in late 2017 and offers an affordable price point in Cherry Creek North, something the neighborhood has been missing. It is aimed at business and millennial travelers who have historically been priced out of staying in the upscale neighborhood. 

Structure
The focal point of the Moxy Denver Cherry Creek is The Now, a lobby that features plenty of comfortable couch seating, games like Connect Four and a bar that remains open until 1:30 a.m. and serves nine different styles of the brand’s signature naan bread. 

Customers go straight to the bar to check in rather than seeing someone at a traditional registration desk, and all arriving adults are offered a complimentary Get Moxy — the brand’s signature drink, made with Bacardi Dragon Berry Rum, lime juice and dark cherry syrup (Sealover). 

Guest spaces are smaller than in other area hotels, but the 140 rooms featuring a queen bed and 30 more rooms with two double beds are also priced below $200 per night on average, a low price point for the neighborhood. They are simple; for example, there are no chests of drawers in the Moxy, only under-bed storage drawers and peg boards on the walls for hanging clothes. 

The facility has many of the usual group-gathering amenities, such as a fitness center and 1,600 square feet of meeting space, including a terrace. And it features a 100-seat Cherry Creek Beer Garden serving food and beer, as well as its lobby bar. It also has an ironing room, an area where guests can press their clothing in a communal way — a uniquely Moxy concept. And it has a message board showing tweets and Facebook posts about the hotel, next to a vending machine with quirky items (Sealover). 

Neighborhood
As late as 1882, the area of Denver now known as Cherry Creek was sparsely populated, and certainly did not resemble the bustling community it is today. Beginning that year, much of the empty plain in the area was developed into a farm on “Harman’s Subdivision,” owned by lawyer and onetime judge Edwin P. Harman, originally of Mississippi, and his wife Lou. 

Mr. Harman seems to have intentionally engaged in city development from the very beginning: he listed lots on his subdivision for public sale the same year he filed his 1882 property purchase. A community quickly grew up around his farm, and in 1886 it was incorporated as its own town bounded by York Street (now University), Carson Street (now 6th Avenue), Cherry Street (now Colorado Boulevard), and Sumner Street (now 2nd Avenue) (Fisher).  

The town was annexed by Denver in 1895. Following annexation, and with the passing of time, the Town of Harman ceased to be referenced as such. Denverites subsumed the town under a new neighborhood moniker based on the creek flowing nearby, just downhill and south from town. This new neighborhood of “Cherry Creek” was nearly completely plotted by the 1920s, with sidewalks, alleys, curbs, sewers and the like laid out around new homes. The area has indeed seen many changes over time: going from a farm with a creek and a grove, to a small town, to a neighborhood and eventually to a retail district, all over the course of 130 years (Fisher). 

References 

Sealover, E. Coming Monday: An affordable Cherry Creek hotel for the communal-minded. Retrieved from https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2017/11/01/coming-monday-an-affordable-cherry-creek-hotel-for.html.  

Fisher, B. A Brief History of the Cherry Creek Neighborhood in Denver Colorado. Retrieved from https://brianfisherhomes.com/p/7327/a-brief-history-of-the-cherry-creek-neighborhood-in-denver-colorado.

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