Denver’s Newest Hotel Will Make You Feel Like You’re Staying in a 13-Story Tree House

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The Afar take

The new Populus Hotel in downtown Denver is billed as the nation’s first carbon-positive hotel, meaning it plans to sequester more carbon than it produces. It’s also a striking new architectural feat with a biophilic design that feels both modern and homey. The white facade of the wedge-shaped building is marked with hundreds of windows in more than 60 rounded shapes meant to mimic the bark of an aspen (known by its scientific name as Populus tremuloides), a tree native to Colorado.

Populus/Sarah Meyer

The hotel building was created with recycled or low-carbon materials, and it operates with 100 percent wind and solar energy and zero-waste dining. Part of the carbon-positive effort also includes planting tens of thousands of trees across the state every quarter.

The arboreal inspiration of the exterior continues inside the hotel—the whole building was designed to feel like climbing a 13-story tree. The lobby, for example, is a re-imagining of a forest floor. The concrete floor is speckled with river pebbles, while the potted plants are the kind that typically provide ground coverage. The front desk is made from a cottonwood tree that fell in the nearby community of Longmont, the walls are decorated with shingles made from pine killed by invasive beetles, and the decorative beams above are reclaimed pieces of snow fencing from Wyoming. Stellar Jay, the rooftop restaurant, by contrast, is based on a tree’s canopy, with wallpaper made of actual leaves, emerald green banquettes, polished wood bistro tables, and views of the city.

As a Colorado Springs resident who visits Denver at least once a month for events, I’ve stayed at most of the capital city’s hotels. This is hands down my new favorite, both for overnight stays and for dining, and one of the handful I’ll recommend to visiting friends and family.

Who’s it for?

Those who want to be in the heart of Denver’s urban center but feel like they’re in nature, farm-to-table-driven foodies, and eco-conscious couples traveling with dogs (the hotel allows up to two per room, but be sure to check availability before booking).

The location

Ironically, where the Populus now stands—a triangular block in downtown Denver among the city’s civic, arts, and commercial districts—was the site of Colorado’s first gas station. It’s at the intersection of West Colfax Avenue and 14th Street, across from Civic Center Park, a green space bookended by the Denver City Council building and the Colorado State Capitol. Unlike most other hotels in the Front Range, which tend to orient toward the Rocky Mountains, the Populus was built to face the legislative buildings, offering a different view than just about any other accommodation in the city. Personally, I like it. The public park is beautifully maintained, and the city has plans to make it more of a community center in the coming years.

The rooms

If the sun-drenched lobby is meant to feel like the understory of the forest, the dimly lit hallways with textured dark wallpaper are more reminiscent of being in the tree itself (they’re reachable by elevators that play birdsong recorded in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park).

Each of the 265 guest rooms and suites (ranging from 180 to 554 square feet) is sleek, minimalist, and decorated in earth tones like toffee brown, sage green, and terra-cotta. You may notice that the concrete ceilings and walls were left raw and untreated to help reduce the carbon footprint and waste associated with construction. However, here, too, you’ll find touches of nature—some headboards were made from fallen pine trees, and many accommodations have real plants. Each room also has a framed pressed wildflower and a seed-shaped ceramic vase filled with lifelike painted paper flowers by an artist known as PaperHillary.

Populus/Jennifer Wade

Those rounded or eye-shaped windows frame views of the city—the whole capital in some places, a sliver of a mountain, or a chunk of a neighboring building you might not otherwise notice. Those oddly shaped panes aren’t just for looks, either. The curved overhangs help provide shade (important in a city with roughly 300 days of annual sunshine) to keep cooling costs down. Some of the smaller rooms even offer curved, hammock-like benches in the window alcoves that feel cozy and contemplative.

Bathrooms feature Grown Alchemist bath products in refillable bottles, and large walk-in showers offer multiple heads to suit guest preferences (some also have a separate soaking tub).

In-room amenities across all room types include oversize robes, a coffee and tea maker, and a mini-bar stocked with local adult beverages, like Westdown and Bound beers, and small bites, such as salty snacks from Denver Chip Co.

One other notable sustainability measure unique to the Populus rooms: The carpets are made from recycled material that will break down within 15 years once they reach the landfill. (Carpets are one thing that hotels have to change every 10 years or so—this allows them to do it a little more thoughtfully.)

The food and drink

Denver has a robust dining scene with a bevy of Michelin-recommended restaurants, and the high number of locals I saw at all three of Populus’s dining concepts indicated that they’re getting the attention of local gourmands. That’s because much of the restaurant staff came from the city’s lauded institutions, including executive chef Ian Wortham, who previously helmed Frasca Food and Wine and Tavernetta (two restaurants with one star and a Bib Gourmand designation, respectively).

On the ground floor are two concepts: a café and a (nearly) all-day restaurant. The former is an outpost of Little Owl Coffee, a local roastery that offers espresso-based beverages and a rotating selection of pastries, such as croissants and gluten-free coffee cake.

Courtesy of Alanna Hale/Populus

The latter restaurant, Pasque, named for a wildflower in the Rocky Mountains that signals the start of spring, focuses on seasonally inspired cuisine. While the restaurant offers breakfast, lunch, and dinner, it’s that final meal of the day where the cuisine really shines. All the appetizers are vegetable forward—the roasted carrots, served in a pool of carrot vinaigrette and topped with smoked paprika, toasted seeds, and dill, was a standout, although the neighboring table said we should have opted for the chickpea pancake with salted root vegetables and an onion yogurt dip. For mains, the rye tagliatelle with Colorado lamb ragu, feta, and mint and the pastured chicken breast with roasted beets, preserved peach, and barley scored high marks from both one adventurous epicure and one picky eater.

Populus/Steve Hall

While Pasque feels more traditional and elegant, Stellar Jay, located on the rooftop and offering both indoor and outdoor seating, is more social, with its tapas-style plates, many of which are cooked on a skewer over a live fire. Both the bison and venison skewer, seasoned with smoky pine needles and juniper glaze, and the Colorado beef, prepared with fried rosemary and sunchoke crunch, were perfectly cooked and complemented by sides of roasted beets with ricotta and sweet potatoes dripping in smoked butter. Whatever you do, don’t skip the cocktails, especially if you have time to enjoy one on the foliage-covered outdoor patio. The mezcal-based old-fashioned paired particularly well with the fire-licked proteins, while the nonalcoholic Earl Grey spritz makes for an excellent palette cleanser.

Staff and service

If I had to choose two words to describe the staff, they’d be “experienced” and “earnest.” For example, our dinner server at Pasque started the meal by giving us a rundown of the restaurant’s earthy ethos before going into a long-winded explainer about other ways the space focused on sustainability. When she caught herself rambling, she paused and said, “Sorry, I’m just really excited about what we’re doing here.” We found it endearing.

Accessibility

The lobby, event spaces, fitness center, and all guest rooms (many of which are ADA-compliant) are reachable by designated accessible routes. However, the dark hallways to the guest rooms might be harder to navigate for guests with visual impairments.

Sustainability measures

To keep track of its sustainability efforts and to stay transparent about its ambitious carbon-positive goals, Populus works with Lotus Engineering & Sustainability, a women-owned firm that gathers data on operations and offsetting measures. The hotel is also targeting LEED Gold Certification, an award given to buildings that demonstrate exceptional sustainability in their design and operation. Leading the way toward that goal is Thomas Hudson, the hotel’s environmental experience manager. He’s also training the more than 150 staff members on how to use the on-site food digester and composter, which turns all food waste into fertilizer that then goes back to the farms where they source ingredients.

With the help of the U.S. Forest Service, Populus also plans to plant one tree per guest per night in the national forests in Colorado that Japanese beetles have decimated. Specifically, it will plant an Engelmann spruce tree, which is resistant to beetles. The goal is to plant 20,000 trees in 2024 and roughly a quarter million each following year (that’s in addition to the 70,000 trees planted in Gunnison County during 2022 to offset carbon emissions during construction). Populus also invites guests to do their own gardening—the sleeves that hold their room keys are biodegradable and infused with wildflower seeds.