New Red Lion building in Vail Village won’t contain Red Lion restaurant

A proposed redesign of Vail Village’s Red Lion building does contain a restaurant, but that establishment won’t be the Red Lion, say the current owners.

The plan currently making its way through Vail’s design and review board proposes to retool the restaurant space in a way that will contain less than half of the current establishment’s total square footage, and reorient it so the restaurant patio no longer faces Bridge Street, but Hanson Ranch Road instead. High-end retail space is then expected to occupy the Bridge Street-facing part of the building that the restaurant is now in, according to the plan.

The Red Lion Restaurant’s owners aren’t amenable to the changes, says co-owner Rod Linafelter, and since Linafelter’s group also has the rights to the restaurant’s name, they say whatever comes to occupy that space won’t be the Red Lion.

Linafelter said the smaller restaurant space won’t allow for as many guests, the new patio orientation won’t get as much sunlight, and the move away from Bridge Street toward Hansen Ranch Road won’t attract as much walk-by traffic.

“In that little space with that lack of street exposure, it’s never going to be the Red Lion,” Linafelter said. “The sad thing is this is always a risk when you’re a lessee and not the owner of the property.”

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The other sad thing, says Linafelter, is the slice of history and character that will disappear along with the Red Lion restaurant, which was first opened by Marge and Larry Burdick in February of 1963 during the Vail Mountain ski area’s first season.

“No matter where you are in the world, if you start talking to people and you say you’re from Vail, Colorado, anyone who knows Vail knows the Red Lion,” Linafelter said. “The words I most often hear associated with the Red Lion are ‘iconic’ and ‘heart and soul.'”

One of the confusing parts of the Red Lion restaurant’s current predicament is the owners of the building have chosen to name their business Red Lion LLC (the company was known as Landmark until a few years ago), and Linafelter has been bombarded with questions from people confusing his business — the Red Lion restaurant — with the Red Lion LLC, which is proposing the remodel.

Linafelter said if he were to remodel the aging building, he would keep the current configuration, noting that while the new design does add room for extra people, it’s adding that extra space below grade, which will require guests to descend a staircase into the lower level.

“People don’t want to go into a windowless basement for an apres ski drink and meal,” Linafelter said. “If the owners feel that they need to serve an unmet need of having more high-end retail space in town, why not put that on Hanson Ranch Road?”

Pitching the venue as a new space for live music is also misleading, he said, as live music has always been a part of the Red Lion’s draw. The Red Lion restaurant currently employs a rotating cast of four local musicians.

“But our music is on the street level, outside Bridge Street, so it attracts guests walking by,” he said.

Linafelter said he would question the proposed design — with its below-grade music venue, estimated to hold 350-400 people — regardless of his involvement in the project.

“The logistics of doing a major music venue in that part of Vail Village, when these big bands want to show up with semitrailers full of equipment, doesn’t seem realistic to me,” Linafelter said. “And I also question how the town of Vail considers moving food and beverage underground to be satisfying of the project’s master plan.”

Linafelter is directing those who want to comment on the plan to email publicinput.vailtowncouncil@vail.gov.

The project is scheduled to come before the town’s design review board on Wednesday; the meeting is scheduled to start at 2 p.m. and it’s the last item on the main agenda.

Linafelter said his current lease goes through April of 2027, and he has opted not to extend that lease.

Linafelter says at this point, the only thing that could save the Red Lion restaurant would be to scrap the current plans to redesign the building and opt for a standard remodel instead, keeping the current configuration the way it is.

If that doesn’t happen, it will likely mean that next season will the Red Lion restaurant’s final year of business, after more than 60 years in Vail.

If that’s the case, Linafelter said, “We’ll be planning for one last amazing season,” he said.