A year ago, Brooke and Bobby Mikulas with partner Nate Grimm broke ground on a plot of land off South Nevada in downtown Colorado Springs. Before a pandemic was ever something that was spoken about, the team had a vision to build Kinship Landing which is a friendly boutique hotel that connects locals and travelers around city exploration and outdoor adventure.
“We have always wanted to provide an experience driven lodging concept without totally tanking your road-trip budget or weekend warrior budget,” says Bobby Mikulas. Their suites are a mix of luxury and practicality with freestanding tubs and overhead garage doors. All the details have been thought of thoroughly. They even hired a mill worker out of Denver who is curating their custom bunkrooms. Total there are 7 suites, 27 junior suites, 6 bunk rooms (total of 48 bunk room beds).
One of their goals is to connect people to the best in the city. “We want to welcome them, provide them with an amazing night sleep, but hold their hand to the best of the city.”
The hospitality industry took a horrendous hit in March with COVID.
“At the heart of Kinship is authentic community. We always say people make the place. When COVID hit, we took a step back and said ‘what is going on in the world?’ Is hospitality going to be a thing? But we have an end game in mind. This is a long term project for us whether COVID stays for one more month or ten more years. We did our research and dug in to see what is going on globally and locally and we found that hotels are a very safe place to be during a pandemic. No matter what, Kinship Landing is going to be an asset to this community and to people traveling here”
Bobby Mikulas goes on to discuss the tweaks they are making to ensure the safety of their patrons. He also discusses the importance of their value system. “The first filter we use before we make any decision is to ask if it exemplifies courage, trust, adventure, community and generosity. We run any decision through those values and when people get around a table to discuss travel those five values inevitably come up.”
Kinship Landing has been a project years in the making and Mikulas reflects on the most important postures they have taken.
“One of our core competencies as a team is to remain resilient and adaptable. The only way we have remained resilient over the last three years is because this is a community project. We are surrounded by a cloud of community members that take ownership.”
Kinship Landing is taking bookings currently opening December 2020.
Learn more:
Website: kinshiplanding.com
Socials: @kinshiplanding
Meet the Photographer
Chris Combs
Four Fires Creative
Chris Combs’ journey in photography started in 2017 when he founded Four Fires Creative in Colorado Springs. As a native, he’s seen the growing renaissance in the community through in art and culture. “The city seems to be in a process of reinvention, as an artist, this excites me,” he remarks. His heart has been in photography ever since his grandmother would give him her old Minolta 35mm and a couple rolls of film and point to the forest and surrounding campsites. As an adult, he found a rekindling of photography when he traveled to Uganda. In the midst of a pandemic, he left his day job to pursue photography full time. “It was a scary jump to make but I knew that this was the perfect time to capture stories. Photography is the one of the best ways for us to connect to our world – past, present and future.”
