Serving the community since 1926
WEEK OF DECEMBER 12, 2024
VOLUME 98 | ISSUE 2
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New life coming to East Colfax hotel Developers hope to reopen by end of 2025 BY ERNEST GURULÉ SPECIAL TO COLORADO COMMUNITY MEDIA
This image shows the planned student gathering areas as part of the Arrupe Jesuit High School expansion project.
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Arrupe Jesuit breaks ground on campus expansion project BY ERIC HEINZ ERIC@COTLN.ORG
Since opening in 2003 with a student body of about 60 students, Arrupe Jesuit High School has been looking to expand its campus and welcome more children to its educational opportunities. About 20 years later, the school now has more than 400 students and has grown some of its major programs, but Arrupe Jesuit isn’t stopping there. With new expansion and renovation projects underway, the school hopes to grow its enrollment to more than 500 in the next two years. “I propose to you this morning that Arrupe Jesuit High
School is the living, breathing, ever-expanding example of the difference that hard work, informed by an Ignatian worldview, can make in the life of a community,” said Michael O’Hagan, president of Arrupe Jesuit, during an Oct. 23 groundbreaking ceremony for the project. Arrupe Jesuit is building a 25,000-square-foot addition to the north of the existing school, and they will relocate the school’s main entrance to improve school security and enhance the operational efficiency. The extension includes a new gymnasium, locker rooms, an expanded fitness center and student support
VOICES: 8 | LIFE: 10 | CALENDAR: 13
offices. Renovations to the existing structure will include adding at least 8,400 square feet for classrooms and student activities. The school also wants to expand the teacher workroom and cafeteria, in addition to other projects that are intended to increase student enrollment. Arrupe Jesuit is spending $27.6 million on its expansion and another $13.2 million to renovate the existing school. During the groundbreaking ceremony, Craig Zoellner, chair of the Arrupe Jesuit board of trustees, said the projects are important to keep the school not just
growing but functioning efficiently. “I’m sure you’ve all heard through the course of this campaign about the shortcomings of the school and its current state, which are numerous,” Zoellner said. “Classes in stairwells, changing for athletic events in locker rooms, substandard science labs, no place for students to gather. So this project is really about needs, not wants. The students, through their achievements over these last 20 years, have proven that they deserve more and they want more. The faculty deserves more and needs more.”
For anyone taking a trip down memory lane in Denver, there’s no better place than Colfax Avenue. It’s not only the longest continuous street in the United States, stretching nearly 50 miles from end to end, but also a corridor that tells the most interesting stories. Like so many businesses on this eastwest stretch across metro Denver, Colfax has seen countless cycles of boom and bust. One living testament to these economic spikes sits at 3015 E. Colfax Ave. The address once belonged to the Rockbar, a joint where the music ran the gamut from 1970s-era disco to every sound that followed. Above Rockbar was a motel, one that saw its final days were less a good life lived than a cry for a merciful ending. Decay had more than snuggly wrapped itself around the once popular go-to nightspot and cost-friendly stop for travelers. Transient squatters had become its rent-free tenants. The place had the patina of blight. But that is about to change. Brian Toerber, president of Inspire Investment Group, said his organization broke ground in June to revamp the motel. Toerber and his partners, along with the city of Denver, have put the pieces in place and work has begun on the All Inn Hotel, a boutique hotel scheduled to open “the fourth quarter of 2025.” The Inspire Group purchased the property in 2016, thinking at the time it would begin its new life as micro-apartments. But the city saw it as something else. Denver government officials wanted a hotel in an area that desperately needed a presentable, affordable and safe dwelling for visitors. They also wanted a magnet they hoped might entice other new businesses to drop anchor. The property is within minutes of a number of high-traffic seasonal sites and historic neighborhoods, including City Park Golf Course, The Denver Museum of Nature and Science and the Black American West Museum and Heritage Center. SEE HOTEL, P4
SEE EXPANSION, P4
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