Lakewood demolishes two motels that were magnet for crime

Lakewood’s city renewal authority has demolished two of the town’s most problematic motels in current months.

The Blue Sky Motel at 6203-6205 W. Colfax Ave. was taken down final month, whereas the Chalet Motel at 6051 W. Alameda Ave. was demolished in November.

It price the Lakewood Reinvestment Authority $6 million mixed to amass and flatten the 2 motels, based on metropolis officers.

The Blue Sky shut down in fall 2021 and the Chalet in June 2023. Each had grow to be magnets for crime and have been decided to be a blight on the neighborhood.

In 2019, a 32-year-old lady was murdered in one of many Blue Sky’s rooms. Two years later, a 29-year-old man was shot and killed there.

Lakewood mentioned in a January 2022 submit on the town’s web site that it had revoked the lodging license of the Blue Sky primarily as a result of excessive quantity of police calls on the property.

Just a few months after closing, the motel caught on fireplace. A number of of its rooms have been scorched.

Lakewood Police, in the meantime, responded to 237 requires service on the Chalet within the three-year span between 2020 and 2022, based on the division.

Isabella Nunez and Katie Faltys, each 30, each work for the Lakewood Reinvestment Authority and helped make the acquisition and demolition occur.

They mentioned Oakland-based marketing consultant Financial & Planning Methods is conducting a examine to find out the most effective makes use of for the land and the monetary feasibility of them. Concepts floated by metropolis officers and neighborhood members vary from mixed-use multifamily improvement to inexpensive housing for artists.

Earlier than the top of the yr, Lakewood hopes to start accepting proposals from builders excited by constructing on the vacant heaps.

The Blue Sky web site is about half an acre and the Chalet web site is 0.83 acres. Each are zoned for mixed-use improvement.

The LRA’s commissioners, which include Lakewood’s 11 metropolis council members and 4 different authorities officers, may have the ultimate say on which proposals get accepted.

“Something there’s higher than what was there,” Nunez mentioned.

Each motels have been bought as a result of there was a “prepared vendor,” as they have been listed in the marketplace, Nunez and Faltys mentioned. The authority doesn’t at the moment plan to purchase and tear down different motels within the metropolis, though it all the time displays what’s on the market, they mentioned.

To fund the acquisitions, the authority is utilizing a type of tax increment financing, a instrument that city renewal authorities use.

After the authority was shaped in 1998, it began establishing “reinvestment space initiatives,” with the quantity of property taxes collected on the time of multinational serving as a benchmark. As the quantity of taxes remitted over time will increase as a result of rising property values, the excess in comparison with the benchmark is put aside to be reinvested within the space.

The Blue Sky motel falls inside a West Colfax reinvestment space. That fund has “a number of million” left in its coffers for the yr within the wake of the motel’s demolition. The Chalet is a part of an Alameda reinvestment space, whose fund ran out final yr as its 25-year funding interval expired on the finish of 2023.