There are only 11 other campuses in the country that offer the same campus-based teaching program. The facility offers students and the community a 150-room hotel, a conference center and a learning laboratory.
The hotel will eventually be fully staffed by MSU Denver students in order to give them a hands-on learning experience that will prepare them for their future careers. The restaurant holds 72 people and is completely student-run. Eventually, the restaurant will serve wine and beer made by MSU Denver students.
The facility also includes a sensory analysis lab for wine, beer and spirits classes.
"We call this the sensory analysis lab because we are using our senses to judge and evaluate the wine. We're looking at the appearance of wine, we're smelling the wine and we're tasting the wine," the wine instructor said.
The desks and tables are illuminated to help students evaluate the color of the wine. The room is also climate controlled.
"You have to have the proper light to really see the clarity and the color of the wine. I think we have all been in restaurants and we see someone holding a wine glass and notice the color of it. Every 15 minutes, the air is filtered out of the room so that we don't have any foreign odors," a wine instructor said.
The wine instructor says there are no other facilities quite like the one at The Hotel and Hospitality Learning Center at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
The project cost was $45 million.
(KUSA-TV © 2012 Multimedia Holdings Corporation)