Drive by the La Vista Motel at 5500 E. Colfax Ave., in the Hale neighborhood, just across the street from fancy South Park Hill, and you'll see a mess.
In the world of rundown Colfax motels, this one has looked particularly bad. Now that it's under construction, it looks even worse.
But not for long.
Developer Nathan Beal is working to turn the old motor lodge into a new motor lodge with vintage '60s chic. He envisions the future La Vista as a "touchless motel concept."
"Something between a traditional motel and AirBnB will give our guests the flexibility and competitive pricing we know they want," he explained in a statement.
Basically, guests will time travel back to when Colfax culture was hip and skip all the crummy years.
The motel was built in 1960, when highway travel was trendy. Colfax Avenue was a hub of car culture and the motels lining it were some of the hottest places to stay.
Once interstates became available, fewer travelers used Colfax for travel, and the motels and hotels along the strip fell into disrepair.
Like the nearby Regis Motel that the city shut down last year, La Vista became a hub of crime, drug use and prostitution. Guests rated it a one-star motel, describing bed bugs, robberies, stained sheets and domestic violence.
In 2021, a man was murdered on site.
"This motel was an eyesore along that stretch of East Colfax," Beal said. The local business improvement district was fighting to get it shut down. "There were a lot of bad things that were happening there."
In 2022, Beal bought the property, hoping to turn it into multifamily homes. When that project fell through, he decided to make the motel another motel, just better.
Despite its lurid past, Beal is looking forward to La Vista's bright future.
A coffee shop, a speak-easy-style lounge, an event space and 23 rooms, all retro in design, will help attract the clientele Beal wants.
He imagines his guests could be young professionals visiting Colorado for the outdoors who also want to spend a couple nights in a Denver neighborhood.
"There's a lot of people that come to visit families in those surrounding neighborhoods that maybe want to be walkable to them, or at least near to them," he said. "And then there's also a lot of hospitals around there."
While Beal promises prices will be affordable compared to high-end hotels, probably under $200 per night, they'll also be too high to attract people looking for the cheapest rooms on Colfax for a night off the streets.
Developers in other cities, including Nashville and Austin, have undertaken similar revamps of old motels, and those seem to have have worked, he said. So to him, there is precedent for something like this succeeding.
"I've kind of had the mentality of you build something nice, and people will come to us," Beal said. "I'm throwing caution to the wind a little bit."
