Walter Isenberg: Denver's Living Room

Walter Isenberg is the founder of Sage Hospitality, one of the most respected independent hotel operators in the country. He has spent 40 years building places people go to, not through, from the Oxford Hotel to Union Station to Dairy Block and McGregor Square.But the story starts in a dish pit in Kansas City at 14, where a Mexican immigrant named Carlos Pena in a beautiful suit pulled a bullheaded kid out of the dishes and put him on the floor. And it runs through a lesson from mentor Phil Pistelli about 16 dirty toilets, and why the people who face them every morning are the ones who make or break everything.In this conversation, Walter talks about arriving in Denver in 1984 when the oil economy had collapsed and the office vacancy downtown was 40 percent. About managing distressed hotels nobody else wanted. About standing in the great hall of Union Station and seeing Denver's living room before anyone else could. About what it means to start with a vision, not a financial model, and build everything else around it.We also talk about where Denver is headed, what the city got right with DIA and what it needs to get right now, why the opposite of belonging is fitting in, and what it takes to stay optimistic when the sluice is running.This is the first episode, of Seat at the Table: Nourishing Hospitality. Available on all major platforms.