14-05-2025
Royal Palace Motel on Colorado Boulevard near Colfax torn down
DENVER (KDVR) — For more than a decade, Denverites driving near Colfax Avenue and Colorado Boulevard have wondered what will happen to the old Royal Palace Motel building.
The motel has stood at 1565 Colorado Blvd., just north of Colfax Avenue, since 1969, and on Tuesday, the building met its fateful end. It will be replaced with an apartment building.
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The motel closed its doors in 2013 and has been vacant ever since. Over the years since it was abandoned, it has been the source of many emergency calls and crimes.
A former owner of the hotel told FOX31's Shaul Turner that the property has a bad history of break-ins that resulted in some $20,000 in expenses every month.
Residents have mixed feelings about seeing the landmark demolished.
'It's always been there, I will miss it,' one man told Turner.
Others say the old building disrupts the progress and recent development aesthetics of the City Park neighborhood.
'I'm so excited, it's such an eyesore and it's so rundown,' another resident told Turner.
However, its history of crime predates its abandoned era.
One of the infamous cold cases that occurred at the hotel is the murder of John Eggers. According to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, Eggers was a guest at the motel when he was killed. A housekeeper entered his room and found him dead of a gunshot wound inside, and the suspect or suspects responsible have not been identified to this day.
Before Interstate 70 was built, Colfax was known as the 'Gateway to the Rockies' and was the main route into the Mile High City and the high country. The 60s brought a lot of tourism and traffic to Colfax Avenue, and the old hotels and mid-century neon signs that remain today serve as a glimpse into the highway's glory days.
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During the '60s and '70s, Colfax Avenue became a haven for topless bars and sexually explicit theaters, according to the Denver Public Library. This earned Colfax Avenue the title of 'the longest, wickedest street in America' by Playboy magazine.
Interstate 70 was completed in the Denver area in the late 60s and early 70's, beginning a steady decline in traffic on the highway, according to the Colfax Avenue Museum website.
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