A new hotel — a restoration of a historic inn built in the 1950s — has opened on East Colfax.

The All Inn Hotel, located on 3015 E. Colfax Ave., debuted as a boutique lodging destination inspired by the building’s midcentury modern architecture. The 54-room hotel also includes a restaurant called FiNo and an all-day cafe and bar in the lobby called All Is Well.

The hotel also plans to build an outdoor wine garden in the future. 

The project to transform a historic Colfax inn into a swanky retro hotel for the 2020s has been years in the works and comes at a time when East Colfax Avenue is going through growing pains with the construction of the bus rapid transit route.

The hotel’s owner Brian Toerber, the president of Inspire Investment Group, bought the property in 2016 for $3.5 million, according to property records. 

He originally planned to convert the 1950s building into low-rent workforce housing, he told The Denver Gazette. But shortly after buying the former inn, Denver City Council leaders at the time asked if he’d be willing to keep it a hotel, as there weren’t many in the area.

“I didn’t know anything about hotels, never done a hotel,” Toerber said. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to be in that type of business.”

In the end, he decided to keep to its roots.

The building first opened in 1959 as the Fountain Inn, at a time when Colfax Avenue was a prominent destination for roadside motels. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2020 for its role in building East Colfax into a nightlife and entertainment district and its midcentury modern architecture.

The hotel was later sold in 1969 and renamed the Executive Inn. As Interstate 70 opened and diverted traffic away from Colfax, the hotel, like many other businesses in the area, suffered from a rise of crime. 

In 2003, it became The All Inn and the popular music venue The Rock Bar opened inside its restaurant space. The music venue closed in 2012 and it has been empty since then — that is, until now. 

Since making the decision to keep it a hotel, it took a few years to figure out how to build the vision, Toerber said. But as they were ready to take the first steps, the pandemic hit. No lender would talk to them for nearly three years, especially for a hotel in an “unproven untested market” like Colfax, he said.

Finding financing was one of the most difficult parts of the $22 million project, he said. He was able to close some of the funding by securing historic preservation status, a requirement for tax credits.

For Toerber, the hotel’s most recent name, “All Inn,” became the motto for the tenuous project.

“We went in on this together both physically, mentally, emotionally and financially,” he said. “So, we went all in and we are all in on this community.”

He just added hotel in the name because most motels have drive-up rooms, while this building has a traditional lobby and guest rooms on each floor.

The All Inn Hotel follows the La Vista Motel, another former roadside lodging destination on Colfax Avenue that was restored with a modern retro touch. 

The interior of the All Inn Hotel features midcentury modern details — from geometric lamps with warm lighting to various wood tones and rich color couch cushions. The hotel also keeps a former tradition in the building, where each floor has a different color theme.

Inside the restaurant, FiNo, thin vertical windows are surrounded by the building’s original rock wall. When Toerber first bought the building, he said the rock was covered in graffiti and grime. It was arduous work to clean it off, but now it’s one of his favorite features.

The hotel has 54 rooms, priced around $200 on an average night. It’s meant to cater to “everyone,” Toerber said.

He listed potential customers could be hospital visitors needing a place to stay near National Jewish Health on Colorado Boulevard, tourists wanting to be close to City Park and downtown or traveling business groups. He also mentioned he hopes the hotel attracts bands coming to play at the Bluebird Theater or the Fillmore Auditorium. They even have room to park their tour buses, he said.

The new hotel’s timing comes as BRT construction on Colfax has significantly hurt businesses along the corridor. Toerber said he’s been getting to know many of the business owners around the hotel since it opened and said he hopes to help them in any way they can — but he also sees the potential the new bus infrastructure can bring.

“Colfax’s Day is tomorrow. It’s around the corner,” he said. “Hopefully we don’t lose the cool vibe.”

“We’re all going to have to work this together. It can’t just be your father’s Colfax, where it’s all small business and everybody else stays away because small businesses can’t thrive on that,” he added. “And it can’t be just multinational or international people that come in here and put these big boxes up.”

The BRT project is one of the reasons he wanted to commit to this project, he said. The city investing in the area gave him comfort that so should he, Toerber said.

“We’re going to be balancing that out,” he added. “And I think we are kind of nodding to the history here, but we also took a huge renovation risk here.”