The retro neon sign advertising the historic La Vista Motel lit up for the first time in years over a stretch of East Colfax Avenue during a celebration on Thursday night, adding to the glow of the Circle K gas station across the street corner.

The new and improved La Vista Motel is nearly a month away from opening, developer Nathan Beal told The Denver Gazette. He bought the decaying property in 2022.

Many of the 23 rooms have been mostly completed since renovations began last year, but the motel celebrated a new milestone on Thursday with the lighting of its restored retro sign.

The La Vista Motel will be a boutique hospitality experience with a 1960s-vintage feel, including a coffee shop and cocktail lounge called El Piñon.

The cafe and bar open to the public will be operated by the founder of Denver’s Ephemeral Rotating Taproom, Weston Scott, and will serve beans from local roastery Servant Coffee.

Restoring Colfax’s retro motel vibe for modern day

The redevelopment of the old motel is a tribute to East Colfax’s heydays, when motels dotted Denver’s main street in the 1960s and 1970s. Colfax Avenue earned its infamous “wicked” reputation during this era due to the rise in prostitution and drug dealing, according to Denver Public Library archives.

Each room is plastered with blown-up images of mountain ranges, long roads or desert mesas decorated with vintage and mid-century modern radios, refrigerators and lamp bulbs.

The mattresses were lined with white sheets and western-style blankets laid across the foot of each bed.

The brick walls popped with the color of teal and orange doors equipped with electronic key locks and marked by bow tie-shaped room numbers.

“We wanted to lean into that kind of road trip vibe of when this motel was originally constructed,” Beal said

Before the restoration, La Vista Motel struggled with infestations, low ratings from guests and disrepair as it became a hotspot for criminal activity, according to Sopher Sparn Architects who led the redesign.

It would have been cheaper to tear it down and start over with something new, Beal said, but he wanted the challenge.

“We just hope to be a nice welcoming space for the neighbors to live around us and for the travelers to Denver that can finally experience all the fun things that happen along Colfax,” Beal said.

The opening set for early November comes when East Colfax is burdened by the city’s heavy construction to build a Bus Rapid Transit route, pushing dozens of businesses to seek emergency impact grants due to their revenues dropping by 20% or more.

Outside the building at 5500 E. Colfax Ave., on the block between Hudson and Holly Street, the road was barricaded by construction fences leaving drivers less room on the road and fewer places to turn into the motel if they’re driving westbound into downtown.

“It’s going to be a lot of just crossing our fingers,” Beal said, who is hopeful the BRT line will bring more travelers along Colfax.

The neon sign from the late 1950s was in a “pretty bad shape,” said Glen Weseloh, owner of Morry’s Neon Signs, a family-owned neon company based in Denver.

“It had a lot of rust, a lot of rot,” Wesoloh said.

The metal was repaired and repainted, he said. Then they installed the glass tubes, replacing it with double tubes to make the sign more pronounced instead of going with the original single tube structure.

Wesoloch joked his father used to brag that he probably made 60% of the neon signs in Denver.

There may even be a chance the La Vista Motel sign was worked on by Wesoloh’s father himself, Morry. Though to be clear, they’re not sure.

The glowing advertisement was made before Morry’s Neon Signs was founded in 1985, said Todd Matuszewicz, a sign restorer with the business and expert on the history of neon art. But by the touches on the sign, it might have been made by either of two older companies where Morry was a glass worker.

“It’s likely that this is either an Advance sign or an Epcon sign,” Matuszewicz said. “And so Morry didn’t do the metalwork, he would have done the glass work.”

Wesoloh said seeing the Las Vista Motel sign shining reminded him of the days he’d drive around with his father looking at the signs Morry worked on.

With his eyes shining with the reflection of the restored neon sign, Matuszewicz said seeing signs come back to life like this brings a new hope for the neighborhood.

Neon signs — which have dwindled from their peak days of the 1960s — are a reflection of the past and also a beacon for the future, Matuszewicz said.

“When we see one lit up like this, it’s a harbinger of the success that’s going to come,” he said. “To all the people that live on Colfax.”