One wall remains of the American Motel.

Demolition of the Wheat Ridge motel — known for its colossal American flag and outdated sign promoting rooms for just under $33 — began last week after the troublesome business closed in July.

Ironically, American Demolition began crushing the American Motel off of westbound Interstate 70 near the Kipling Street interchange. Just one wall remains next to a pile of rubble, marking the end of an over-50-year history that included one-time guest Elvis Presley and an abundance of crime.

The motel was built in 1975 and, before the rubble and a 2.8 rating on Google, the motel (then a Ramada) once hosted Elvis during his trip to Vail in 1976, according to various websites. That led to the motel naming one of its rooms after the musician.

According to Denver radio station KYGO-FM, Wheat Ridge resident and former DJ Bonnie Botham recalled dancing at the motel in the late 1970s and early 1980s, painting a picture of positive memories before the motel slipped into infamy.

Elvis had left that building, and seemingly so did its bright future.

By 2019, around 7% of all arrests in Wheat Ridge were made at the American Motel, according to a presentation by the police department to the City Council in 2021.

“We’ve got ongoing drug activity in the area, and sometimes in the hotels, thefts and every manner of crime seems to be in and around that area,” Police Chief Chris Murtha told the council.

Following the presentation, the city passed a licensing law that limited how long guests could stay at hotels with locations like the American Motel in mind.

Reviews listed various complaints like cockroaches, smelly rooms, cat litter and even a “huge” dead rat.

“I cannot stress enough how absolutely disgusting this motel is,” reviewer Stephen Cooley complained in 2025.

In 2022, the property was rezoned from commercial to mixed-use commercial “in order to support a greater number of uses that would encourage revitalization of the site, and to provide greater benefit to the neighborhood,” according to the application by Tony Sherman, owner of Terrapin Investments.

Terrapin then purchased the property in January 2023 for $9 million.

The property will be sold to Trinsic Residential Group after demolition, Sherman told BusinessDen. The developer then plans to build a 335-unit apartment building on the site.

The developer has one open apartment building in Denver, the Aura Arts District building in the Baker neighborhood.

The large motel building was known throughout Wheat Ridge, acting as a landmark (if not an eyesore) on west I-70, according to various users on social media.

“I could smell cigarette stench from the highway,” one Reddit user wrote about the motel after the demolition began.

“Think of the poor cockroaches,” another jested.

The demolition marks a second Wheat Ridge landmark being turned into new homes.

E5x Management plans to purchase the land on which Intermountain Lutheran Hospital has sat since 1961 and turn it into a neighborhood with five-story apartment buildings in the middle of the area, townhomes surrounding it and single-family homes on the border.

The planning process on that development is still ongoing, with the defunct hospital still standing.