The old American Motel property at the corner of Kipling Street and Interstate 70 in Wheat Ridge has sold for $16.5 million, closing out a years-long saga that began with a notorious crime magnet and ends with an $80 million apartment complex under construction. Aspen resident and hospitality investor Tony Sherman, who bought the site in January 2023 for $9 million, sold the 5.8-acre parcel at 10101 W. I-70 Frontage Road North to Dallas-based developer Trinsic Residential Group, which is now developing a 335-unit community called Aura Wheat Ridge.
The $16.5 million sale, first reported by The Denver Post, closed out a deal that Sherman says was delayed by roughly two years. Connect CRE also reported on the transaction. Sherman, who acquired the property under the Terrapin Investments entity, spent years remediating and rezoning the site before finally handing it off to Trinsic for construction.
Getting there wasn’t easy. Sherman told the Post that Colorado Department of Transportation staff informed him he couldn’t build on the property because of a supposed highway-construction moratorium, a setback that, along with other agency delays, cost him months and negotiating leverage. He also had to fight Xcel Energy over securing sufficient power for an apartment complex, and he says a demolition contractor did a horrible job handling asbestos-related work, forcing him to remediate the site a second time to remove the toxic material.
From Motel Conversion to Bulldozed Lot
Sherman didn’t always plan to tear the building down. Per the Post’s reporting, he explored converting the 50-year-old motel into apartments and even considered rehabbing it into a Marriott-branded property, though Marriott was not interested in the conversion. Trinsic Residential Group ultimately required Sherman to demolish the building outright before it would move forward, and he now says the land was more profitable and valuable as a cleared parcel than as a renovated motel…