Wheat Ridge may have found a way to tame a “nexus of criminal activity” at its motels along I-70

The cluster of hotels and motels around the Interstate 70 interchange at Kipling Street in Wheat Ridge have provided tens of thousands of tired motorists a solid night’s sleep over the years.

They’ve also been the scene of shootings and beatings, as well as a 2020 standoff with a suspected bank robber who police officers fatally shot in his room after the man refused to put down a gun he was holding.

“We have certainly seen human trafficking and drug trafficking in these hotels,” Wheat Ridge police Chief Chris Murtha said.

Murtha said neighboring law enforcement agencies often head to the interchange, where about a half dozen hotels and motels sit in the shadow of I-70, to seek out vehicles suspected of having been involved in crimes elsewhere. More often than not, they find what they’re looking for.

“There was a nexus of criminal activity that seemed to lead to these hotels,” the chief said, noting that more than 10% of the city’s 40,000 or so annual calls for service over the last few years came from the hotels.

But an effort Wheat Ridge’s elected leaders embarked on in 2021 to launch a hotel licensing program is starting to bear fruit, Murtha said, pointing to a 17% decline in calls to service to the hotels over the last half of 2022.

The program requires hotels in Wheat Ridge to establish and maintain a security plan approved by the city’s police department, including crime prevention measures via video surveillance, security guards, fencing and lighting.

“We’re not trying to punish the businesses, we’re just trying to get them to comply with community standards,” Murtha said.

The city also enacted an extended stay license for the hotels, which applies to any guests staying 30 days or longer. The license requires the size of a unit to be a minimum of 300 square feet, with a kitchen equipped with a refrigerator, cooktop, dedicated sink and cabinets stocked with cooking and dining supplies. The unit must have a separate space for a bedroom and have access to wireless internet, among other requirements.

The fact is that the hotels serve as a home for some of those unable to crack into metro Denver’s notoriously pricy real estate market — the recent cooling in home prices notwithstanding. Nicholas Chin, co-owner of Apple Inn & Suites at the southwest corner of the interchange, is vying for one of Wheat Ridge’s extended stay licenses.

Chin, who purchased Apple Inn last summer, has poured $150,000 into renovating rooms to comply with extended stay regulations, plus $60,000 on new fencing, $80,000 on 42 security cameras and $50,000 on a new gym.

“The guys selling fentanyl and the prostitutes are gone because we have 24-hour surveillance,” he said. “The guests are happy with the security measures we’ve put in. Most of the troublemakers are out and people are feeling safer.”

Meanwhile, Wheat Ridge has teamed up with the nonprofit human services agency Family Tree, through a $500,000 contract, to help guests living at the hotels find more permanent housing. Scott Shields, CEO of Family Tree, said his organization has made contact with around 70 Wheat Ridge hotel dwellers and found housing for 17 of them since last summer.

“If people are living in a hotel, we recognize this may be their home and this is where they feel safe and stable,” Shields said. “And having a motel roof over your head is better than other living situations we know people are experiencing.”

But it’s not the same as having a place you can call your own, he said.

Murtha said Wheat Ridge took some lessons from its larger neighbor, Lakewood, which implemented its own hotel licensing program in 2019 to address what it described in a city memo at the time as an “inordinate number of calls for service concerning crime and disorder occurring at various hotels and motels” in the city.

That year, a man was arrested at the Big Bunny Motel on West Colfax Avenue for a killing police said he committed at Blue Sky Motel, another Lakewood motel across Colfax Avenue. The city revoked Blue Sky’s motel license in 2021 — the first move of its kind under the program — after the 24-room motel failed to comply with the city’s rules and endured as a hot spot for crime.

Less than a year after it closed, a fire at the motel burned at least three units.