As QuikTrip aims to build a gas station on the site of Evergreen’s El Rancho restaurant, efforts to save and move the historic structure into a new development across the street are making progress.

Developer Observatory Holdings and commercial real estate broker JLL announced Monday it secured a buyer for the 77-year-old building: local bike shop Evergreen Bicycle Outfitters. 

El Rancho opened in 1948 by the Jahnke family as a cafe and trading post. It was operated as a U.S. Post Office site beginning in 1956. The restaurant and brewery claimed former President Dwight Eisenhower was a frequent visitor at El Rancho when he was visiting his personal lodge in Idaho Springs.

It’s notable enough that it got its own exit off of Interstate 70.

National gas station chain QuikTrip bought the El Rancho property on Feb. 20, 2024 for $1.71 million, according to Jefferson County property records. QuikTrip filed a permit with the county in May seeking to build a nearly 5,000-square-foot convenience store with fuel pumps.

El Rancho closed last year.

After calls to save the historic building, QuikTrip said it would cooperate in finding a new owner for the structure – but on different land.

The gas station made an agreement with Observatory Holdings, which is working on a major development across the street along I-70, where there will be a Marriot-branded hotel with 112 rooms and an 8,000-square-foot building for restaurant and retail.

The developer designated a pad within the project to save room for El Rancho and began looking for a buyer in July that could take over the building due to the high costs of moving it.

The new location would have better views of the Continental Divide and traffic visibility that it lost when I-70 replaced Highway 40 as the main route across the mountains, said JLL’s Stephen Markey when they began marketing the property. 

In the new agreement, the buyer Evergreen Bicycle Outfitters would move from its current location about a block away at 29017 Hotel Way into the first floor of the newly-moved El Rancho building. The business would also bring back the brewery and upstairs lodging, the announcement said.

“As longtime residents and small business owners in Jefferson County, we are honored to restore El Rancho, one of the county’s most cherished and iconic landmarks,” said Jake Signet of Evergreen Bicycle Outfitters, in a news release. “This new location at The Observatory offers a chance to preserve the spirit of the building and its place in our community.”

There’s still is a major condition to preserve El Rancho

It’s incredibly expensive to move the historic landmark, according to Observatory Holdings.

They’re willing to privately fund it but are asking local officials to set up a funding mechanism that could make it more financially feasible.

The developers will only move El Rancho onto their site across the street if Jefferson County establishes a metropolitan district on The Observatory site to help fund infrastructure costs such as roads and utilities. 

A metro district is a quasi-government structure used by developers that can issue tax-exempt bonds to finance infrastructure projects and tax properties within its boundaries to pay back those bonds.

Without it, the developers claim it will be “impossible” to move El Rancho.

“Moving that structure comes at a tremendous cost of time and resources, and is not economically viable without a metro district,” said Jack Buchanan of Observatory Holdings.

The metro district proposal will go before the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners on Sept. 30.

The developers plan to move El Rancho by hiring Mammoth Structural Movers to build a metal platform under the first floor of the original buildings, raising it on large wheels and moving it in one piece, Buchanan told The Denver Gazette in an emailed statement. 

Only one area that is 500 square feet would be dismantled, he said.

The developers also won’t move some of the newer additions to the building such as a kitchen and storage areas.

“Evergreen Bicycle Outfitters’ vision for the future of El Rancho is exactly what we imagined – combining the past, present and future of Evergreen in one iconic venue,” Buchanan said in the press release. “Receiving county approval to move forward with the metro district will allow us to make the next chapter of El Rancho a reality for Evergreen.”