Finding a dream and realizing a dream are two different things. Creating the Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort required many puzzle pieces that were continually being put in place.
Owner Torie Giffin realized that each part made it better while giving her the ability to handle life’s tribulations and joys.
Discovering the Location of Paradise at Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort
Giffin was out scouting a new bike route for Ride for Heroes at the Garden of the Gods in 2015 when she happened upon the Buffalo Lodge. She recounts that she had a flat tire on her bike 10 years prior to that in 2005, also right in front of the Buffalo Lodge. “And I don’t even know how to explain it, but I had a weird connection when I had that previous flat tire … because I knew this place was back there.”
Cut to 10 years later, Giffin has this idea and dream for the bicycle resort while scouting the new bike route. She happens upon the Buffalo Lodge again coming out of Garden of the Gods. This time, she went through the entire property. “It looked like that little village I saw in my dream.” All the rooms were on the ground floor enabling a person to ride their bike right into the room and hang it on the wall. The rooms were all right next to each other with many facing each other. “It just had that sense of community that I knew was part of this dream. And the fact that it was a half mile from Garden of the Gods, and it’s tucked into a neighborhood.”
Giffin rode around the back side of the property. “And there’s this huge field and pavilion out there. I could see the fire pit, the bands, the bike-in weddings, and the parties we would have.” Giffin then came back to the front. “I mean, I’d never had a sense like this. And I didn’t know what I was doing. I had no savings in the bank, no health insurance, I got three kids, just making ends meet, right? And I’m working for Chick-fil-A.”
Beginning the Road to Ownership
Giffin recounts that she walked into the hotel lobby and said to the guy at the front desk,: ”My name’s Torie Giffin. And if you ever decide to sell this place, will you call me?” The guy at the front desk told her the lodge was for sale. Giffin said she broke down crying saying to him, “I don’t know how but I’m going to buy your hotel one day.” He looked at her, she says, like she was crazy. He then starts telling her everything that is wrong with the place before ending with the fact that the asking price was $1.4 million but they would take 1.2. “All I heard was that it was for sale.”
“I knew that this was a great area for this dream.” She says many people told her she was too attached to this one property. Her then-husband understandably questioned Giffin. “What does that have to do with us? This is not in our realm of money.” Giffin called her mom, “my real champion,”, who thought that it was an amazing idea. Her husband eventually relented saying if Giffin could find the money, he would support “this dream”. Giffin said all she needed was permission and then she set off to make it happen.
Even when she tried to buy the hotel, there was so much wrong with it in the discovery phase. “It was hard enough coming up with the money to put down on the hotel and still own the idea.” The bottom line business-wise she was told was: “He who has the gold makes the rules.” But Giffin was determined to create this dream of her bicycle resort but also to own it with hard work and labor. “And now six and a half years later, I own 80% of my own business.”
“A huge labor of love.”
Giffin says the Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort is a huge labor of love. All the other offers that were being made on the Lodge at the time, she says, wanted to turn it into condos or homeless housing. “And I’m the only one that wanted to fix it up.” Giffin says she believes that tourists coming to the area want to stay somewhere that has a slice of the local culture and history. She says that the Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort is unique because one of her missions there is to preserve the past.
“This place is over 100 years old. Rumor has it Teddy Roosevelt stayed here when it was an old hunting lodge.” The lodge supposedly used to house one of Roosevelt’s trophy bears (which has been lost to time, long before Giffin assumed ownership). The important aspect to maintain was the underlying identity and history of the property while still making it her own. “I called it the Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort because the idea is that we’re going to bring back the whole great resort concept.”
She recounts an English lady who was one of her first guests. Giffin told this English woman that she wanted to preserve the history of the lodge while also working with the bicycle-friendly concept. “And this lady from England says to me, ‘But don’t change it too much’. It’s like that place in “Dirty Dancing”. You could come back every year and it’s exactly as you remember it.’”
Fixing and Adjusting the Puzzle Pieces
Giffin says every roof on the property was leaking when she bought the Buffalo Lodge. All the toilets were backing up. Every room needed to be renovated. The pool was crumbling. Literally. Giffin says she started with loans from friends and family, including 20% with owner investors, her mom had 13%, and some friends invested 7.8%, in addition to the initial $20,000 loan from Nic Ponsor of Criterium Bike Shop. Giffin said she only had $5,000 in the bank when she finally made the down payment on the hotel. She couldn’t even afford to buy artwork for the opening. Eventually a local artist couple, Manuel and Natalia Pulido were able to create an authentic and dynamic mural that reflected the spirit of the local area and the lodge through buffalo, the mountain, nature, and Giffin’s three children.
Giffin says it all can become very overwhelming. “The daunting undertaking of restoring a 100-plus-year-old property. And doing it on my own as a single parent.” Two of her kids are in college now. Her daughter is about to graduate. Her older son is a freshman in Arizona. “And then my youngest son is 15 now at home and homeschooling.” Her youngest, she says, is independent and really sharp but continues to battle brain cancer. “I’m here and I’m present. I mean, the amazing thing is that this [place] has provided so much for me but he has now had six brain surgeries and 48 days of radiation in the last four years, and he’s on chemo now.” Giffin says she doesn’t know any other job she could have had that would have provided for her and fulfilled her dream in this way. “I have a roof over my head, and I get to watch the lodge and protect and serve as protector and watch over it and my children.”
Giffin has been able to have people come in and watch over the property as she was driving back and forth 28 days straight on two separate occasions to the Children’s Hospital in Denver with her son for treatment. She says that it has gotten easier with the Children’s Hospital now in Colorado Springs. “Our MRIs are regular … weekly, and then infusions every three weeks. But most of the work can be done now in the Springs.”
Forging on with Resilience and Love
“There’s not a cure for my son’s cancer. They would call it ‘incurable’. But we don’t look at it that way. There’s always hope — sitting here four years later, he’s doing really good right now. We’ve had an amazing life that’s been provided for through this lodge. So, in addition to being able to be a mom and run a business that’s been successful and fulfilled my dream, the most amazing thing for me is the guest experience. So, when life is hard … and this is all hard … hospitality is still at my core.”
She says “What’s amazing is that when my son’s sick, I can be upstairs taking care of him or taking him to doctors. But when he’s doing well, I’ve got a party going on downstairs in the lodge or outside that my friends and community are coming to. [People] roll up on a Friday or Saturday night, I have this amazingly lit front patio area, and there could be a live band playing out there. And there’s a food truck, and all the bands are local. And I only have local Colorado craft beer, wine, and spirits.”
Giffin says the reality is “I’ve sunk six and a half years of profit into the building and not taken anything other than — honestly, I’m pretty transparent — $25,000 a year for myself, 100% of profits go back into the property.”
She says they have renovated 47 rooms, the pool, the roof, substantial completion of the sewage line, the fireplaces in the lodge, a party patio out front, and then structural supports for the lodge. But she is still looking at bids to upgrade the electrical system, redo the water lines (because they are still galvanized), redo her front neon light, and also replace her street lamps, which went out.
Giffin credits her investment partners and friends who have let her reinvest all the money for all these years. She, of course, knows the business is worth more on paper but she knows there are all these huge things she needs and wants to do. She says Buffalo Lodge was touted originally as Colorado’s most modern cottage city. “And we’re trying to bring it back to its peak and its prime.”
[…] and his wife are trying to bridge those gaps between native and diverse communities. For the Buffalo Lodge mural, they made sure to have a medicine man come out and bless the entire mural as they were painting […]