Many in Colorado’s bustling cannabis industry have complained about the lack of marijuana-friendly hotels in this state and others. But Keef Cola partner Richmond Meyer is actually doing something about it — he’s opening Nativ Hotel this week in downtown Denver boasting that half of its 16 rooms have weed-friendly balconies.
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While some downtown Denver hotels quietly allow marijuana-tour operators to book vape-friendly rooms, Nativ will be central Denver’s first outwardly 420-friendly hotel.
“The charm of Nativ Hotel is that the owners are in the business,” said Meyer, who is an owner, partner and investor in a number of cannabis-related ventures. “We embrace the culture, we embrace the industry, we embrace the plant and everything that’s coming with it.”
Nativ Hotel (opening in the former Jet Hotel space at 1612 Wazee St. in Denver’s LoDo neighborhood) will hardly be a weed free-for-all, but half of its rooms have cannabis-friendly balconies (no smoking inside, please) and its CanBria cafe will serve coffee infused with imported cannabidiol, or CBD — “so you have your terpenes and your CBD and it’s getting infused in 10-milligram dosages into four of our coffees,” said Meyer. “My partner has concocted different elixirs for different situations — like hangover drinks.”
Meyer, who owns the 420-friendly hotel and is a partner at Keef Cola, also plays a role in licensing company CanCore Concepts, extraction equipment manufacturer Isolate Extraction Systems, hemp company Native Hemp Corp. and the American Trade Association for Cannabis and Hemp. Regardless of Meyer’s many industry hats, Nativ will still feel like a standard, high-end boutique hotel, he said.
“We’re not going to be hanging green crosses everywhere,” added Meyer, who said he funded Nativ with money he made in the financial industry. “We know that there’s this big cannabis tourism movement, and we want to be able to embrace it. We have cannabis-friendly rooms because they have balconies.”
Meyer said he’s been kicked out of hotels in Denver for smoking cannabis inside his room.
“Other hotels will fine you crazy amounts and kick you out,” he said. “I’ve been kicked out of a hotel in Denver for smoking cannabis — it was a mid-tier, smaller hotel, and it was a few years back, but that’s the kind of stuff that won’t happen in our hotel.”
Meyer said he’s working on some “affinity partnerships” with local recreational pot shops and other related businesses; Show your Nativ Hotel room key and get a discount. (Pro tip: Recreational shop LoDo Wellness is right across the street.) As for stocking his rooms’ minibars with branded rolling papers, glass pipes and other accoutrements — he and his team aren’t quite there yet.
“We want to double- and triple-check everything so we’re not putting our business at risk,” Meyer said. “It’s a hotel, a club and a restaurant, and we have a lot of alcohol-related points of sales, so we’re keeping the cannabis to the rooms.”
