Historic pieces of Evergreen’s beloved El Rancho exit restaurant, including the iconic neon sign beckoning apres-skiers from Interstate 70, will be preserved and become a green room at a new public arts pavilion, city and county leaders and a QuikTrip official announced Thursday.
QuikTrip has also scaled back the size of the controversial gas station and convenience store replacing the aged and shuttered El Rancho building, removing the truck stop element that concerned many neighbors.
While public officials celebrating the agreement in a frigid wind on the restaurant porch declared a big victory, some residents who attended the press conference buttonholed the VIPs and accused them of selling out.
“You’re tearing down a historic building just to make a lot of money off a gas station!” one neighbor shouted.
The QuikTrip station and 5,000-square-foot convenience store will move ahead on the site after portions of the restaurant are preserved, possibly by late this year, QuikTrip real estate manager Craig Romrell said.
City and county officials showed a rendering of the El Rancho’s rounded-wood siding and sign repurposed to create a green room and community center at the arts facility planned for Buchanan Park, just to the south on the Evergreen Parkway exit from I-70. One option in the long-running controversy about reviving the restaurant was closed off when engineers told them the old structure cannot be picked up and moved wholesale, said Cory Vander Veen, executive director of Evergreen Park and Recreation District.
Some Evergreen-area residents had been rallying for months to either reopen the restaurant on-site or move it across the U.S. 40 exit road to new location, while also sharply criticizing the QuikTrip plan. They have said the extensive pavement, noise and lighting are out of character next to Evergreen’s remaining forests, and that another gas and convenience retail center isn’t needed there.
The arguments have played out amid other station development controversies across Colorado, including the Buc-ee’s proposed for Palmer Lake that was recently withdrawn, and a major gas retail center pitched for the undeveloped Bakerville exit on I-70 that was also successfully opposed by residents.
County officials have said all along QuikTrip and local development partners had zoning rights to build a gas station on the El Rancho property, and that the building did not have historic designation that would protect it. A local developer said in 2024 no one had come forward with viable plans to reopen the restaurant or move it.
The new compromise is “preserving the essence of El Rancho,” Vander Veen said to TV cameras and a skeptical crowd Thursday. Public officials and developers who have been involved in the talks have tried to acknowledge the “tremendous passion” for El Rancho and family memories from all over Colorado, Romrell told the crowd.
The Evergreen Park & Recreation board president said the restaurant was the only eatery with its own named exit off a federal highway. City and county officials noted it was a nostalgic spot for them, too, with countless community meetings and strategy sessions held over cinnamon rolls and coffee.
Keeping the best pieces of the building and reusing them in a public park represents “a community coming together to preserve a legacy,” Jefferson County Commissioner Lesley Dahlkemper said.
Other local activists who wanted El Rancho memories preserved said after the press conference that they were now more hopeful.
“I consider this a great-good thing,” Evergreen resident Giselle Massi said. “The plan, if enacted well, will preserve at least some of the emotional connection to a much-beloved building. This gesture begins a process of healing for the community.”