A district court judge has ruled that a north Denver hotel did not lose millions of dollars in value in the time it served as an informal shelter for some 400 immigrants.
In 2023, Sage Investments entered into a contract with Yong Cha Prince to buy her Western Motor Inn, on Vasquez Boulevard at Interstate 70. They initially agreed on a $6 million deal.
Prince had run the motel with her husband and son since her family purchased it in 2007. After both men died, she planned to shutter the property and move to South Korea, where she grew up.
But something unexpected happened after she struck the deal with Sage. A stranger showed up on a freezing night with a few Venezuelan immigrants who had arrived in Denver and needed somewhere warm to sleep; before long, the motel was filled with people who had nowhere else to go. The situation lasted for four months.
Sage later sued Prince, saying that her hospitality had damaged the hotel and reduced its value. The company argued that she failed to fulfill their agreement to complete the sale, and asked Judge Andrew P. McCallin to force her to close on the deal. Sage also argued the motel’s unplanned moment as a shelter resulted in enough damage to reduce the sale price to $3.7 million, by about 40 percent. That valuation was based on an assessment Sage commissioned in 2024.
In his ruling, McCallin wrote that Prince did breach her contract with Sage, and therefore could not walk away from the deal. But he said he didn’t agree with Sage’s argument to drop the price.
He wrote that the $3.7 million valuation “lacked credibility,” especially because it arrived only one year after the same assessment group estimated Prince’s property was worth $13 million.
“[Sage] failed to show through other credible evidence that the Court could value the additional damage caused by the sudden housing situation and its aftermath,” he wrote. “This difference in value is all the more difficult to believe when both reports used similar economic and market data. And, it is important to note that the hotel was already in a dilapidated condition when Plaintiff agreed to purchase it for $6.0 million.”
McCallin ordered both parties to meet and agree on a plan to complete the sale within two weeks. But Sage may be entitled to cancel the deal at this point, because McCallin ruled that Prince did violate their contract.
Sage’s attorney said his client declined to comment for this story. We left a message with Prince, but haven’t heard back. Earlier this year, she said she finally moved out of the crumbling property and put a down payment on a home in South Korea, where she’s still hoping to relocate permanently.
