The Colorado Economic Development Commission decided Tuesday to throw a bit more time and money at the effort to facilitate a sale of the Stanley Hotel and fund construction of a film center on the iconic Estes Park property.

The Stanley Film Center, a long-planned but notoriously stubborn-to-build facility that will celebrate the horror genre inside the lodge that inspired Stephen King’s “The Shining” novel, was initially required to be completed this year. Last fall, the EDC approved an extension through the end of 2027, and now that deadline has been moved to the end of 2028. Because the film center project requires significant public funding, which now also includes a new $1 million Economic Development Commission Strategic Fund grant approved Tuesday, the EDC must sign off on extensions to the construction timeline.

The roughly $70 million Stanley Film Center project began in 2015 with a jumpstart in the form of millions of dollars in Colorado Regional Tourism Act incentives. Development of the museum and interactive film center, which has received several more public financing boosts over the years, has been hampered by construction delays, cost increases and the COVID-19 pandemic, which essentially shut down the hospitality industry for several months in 2020.Once complete, the Stanley Film Center will be “a two-story building with approximately 64,735 square feet, to include an approximately 864-seat outdoor amphitheater with a fire capacity of 1,200 (including standing room), an event center, a film museum, a sound stage and related amenities, to be constructed adjacent to the main hotel building and connected to the concert hall,” according to state documents. The project also includes the addition of “more guest rooms and building a new guest entrance to take in more guests and further support the success of the film center.”

Saunders Construction Inc. is the Stanley Film Center’s general contractor, while Blumhouse Productions LLC, the juggernaut production company behind horror films and franchises such as “Get Out,” “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” “The Purge” and “Paranormal Activity,” will serve as the film center’s exclusive exhibit curator.

Management at the Stanley is part of a regional push to bring the Sundance Film Festival to nearby Boulder, which was selected as one of the finalist cities to host the world-renowned event for a decade starting in 2027. If Boulder is selected, the Stanley and its film center would likely host some Sundance events during the festival week.

Over the past several years, Grand Heritage Hotel Group, the Stanley’s owners, has begun infrastructure improvements related to the film center, said Jeff Kraft, deputy director of the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, “and they’ve been refining the architectural design, signing construction contracts and collaborating closely with OEDIT staff on various economic development-related initiatives.”

Grand Heritage CEO John Cullen has been “steadfast and persistent in trying to bring the vision of the Stanley Film Center to fruition,” Kraft said.

To facilitate the film center completion, Grand Heritage, OEDIT and the Colorado Educational and Cultural Facilities Authority have spent the past year or so attempting to execute what OEDIT documents call an “extraordinarily complex multi-stakeholder … transaction.”

Here are the basics of the deal, which has evolved several times since its inception:

CECFA, through a subsidiary called SPACE LLC (Stanley Partnership for Art, Culture and Education), plans to issue approximately $425 million in bonds that the authority says “will be used to retire existing debt for the Stanley Hotel campus, purchase the property and make renovations to the hotel to support future programming.”

At that point, CECFA will take over ownership of the 116-year-old, 140-room Stanley Hotel from Grand Heritage Hotel Group, using revenues from the hotel to fund future public-benefit projects. Denver-based Sage Hospitality Group will assume management of the property after Grand Heritage sells.

However, the “bond transaction stands on a razor’s edge of success or failure and requires restructuring and concessions to be successfully executed and sold on the market,” according to state documents. Part of that restructuring was accomplished with the EDC’s approvals of a deadline extension and new grant funding.

Grand Heritage has agreed to a concession that converts its $52 million equity stake in the Stanley into junior bonds “whose principal and interest are only paid from residual project revenue each year after all other obligations are met,” state documents show.

Blumhouse will subordinate to bondholders the receipt of more than $1 million in annual fees it is contracted to be paid for curation services, while Saunders, CEFCA and Grand Heritage have devised a plan to trim about $3 million from construction contracts “through value engineering and margin reduction,” the documents said.

“We’ve come a long way in a very difficult market and a very difficult structure,” Cullen said.

Despite the challenges and delays, support from the state does not appear on the wane.

“This is exactly what RTA (Regional Tourism Act) was for,” EDC chairwoman Carrie Schiff said of the Stanley group’s efforts to leverage public mechanisms for funding publicly beneficial cultural amenities. “This is historic. But it needs a lot of work, and we’re going to keep on doing this until it’s done.”