REAL ESTATE IN THE NEWS
REAL ESTATE IN THE NEWS
News in the Roaring Fork Valley of Particular Interest to the Real Estate Community
Compliments of the Aspen Board of REALTORS® A rundown of government and business activity over the last month, focusing on issues and items that are of particular interest to the Real Estate community.
ASPEN
Mollie Opens Up in Aspen
After 10 years of planning, permitting and construction, Mollie opened as Aspen’s newest hotel in December, the Aspen Daily News reported. Some of Mollie’s 68 rooms, including the Mollie Suite, are still under construction. The bar and rooftop pool/lounge are also still unfinished. Those spaces are planned to open in mid-February. A standard room with a king bed went for a nightly rate of $500 during the holiday season, though the hotel offered an opening special with 20% off bookings.
The hotel includes a coffee bar (open 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.), a restaurant (open 7 a.m. until 9 p.m.) and a bar (11 a.m. until midnight). Cocktails hover around $20, while appetizers go for around $22 and entrees run from $18 to $54, with a burger going for $24.
Ben Anderson Named CommDev Director
Seven-year city employee Ben Anderson has agreed to serve as Aspen’s newest director of community development, the Aspen Daily News reported. Anderson has served as acting community development director since mid-November, when his former supervisor, Phillip Supino, stepped down from the role for unknown reasons. Anderson previously worked under Supino as the department’s deputy director.
Anderson was the sole internal candidate for the position. Staff in the community development department evaluated his candidacy after a question-and-answer session on Dec. 12. Anderson also went through an extensive interview process with the city’s senior management. As director of community development, Anderson will oversee the regulation and management of Aspen's built environment. The umbrella department includes the planning, zoning, building, historic preservation, and environmental health and sustainability departments.
Retail Sales Remain Flat
Retail sales in Aspen stayed flat through October as its largest sector, the lodging industry, continued to lag behind last year, the Aspen Daily News reported. Year-to-date taxable retail sales in Aspen through October stood at slightly over $1 billion and were about $3 million off the pace set in the same period last year, according to the city’s latest monthly tax report. The lodging/accommodations industry — including STRs — saw $281.8 million in sales through October, a 4% decrease from the same period in 2022, which generated $294.3 million in sales.
Music Tent Gets New Name
The Aspen Music Festival and School’s centerpiece performance venue is getting a new name, the Aspen Daily News reported. The 2,500-seat music tent is being renamed the “Michael Klein Music Tent,” a nod to a historic gift given to the AMFS by current board chair Michael Klein.
The original Music Tent was designed by Finnish architect Eero Saarinen and debuted at the Goethe Bicentennial in 1949, seating 900 to 1,000 people on its benches. It was disassembled and reassembled for use every summer until 1965, when it was replaced by a structure designed by Bauhaus designer-artist Herbert Bayer and Fritz Benedict. In 1993, it was dedicated with its first official name, the “Bayer Benedict Tent." Klein has donated more than $17 million to AMFS in his tenure with the organization, officials said.
RETT Collections Down in 2023
The $75 million sale of a 21,000-square-foot mansion on Ute Avenue helped boost Aspen’s real estate transfer tax collections totaling $22.9 million in 2023, down from $25.9 million in 2022, the Aspen Daily News reported. Real estate transfer tax collections in 2023 hit their lowest total since 2019, according to city of Aspen financial reports.
A record amount of $31.9 million was brought in during 2021 and $27.1 million in 2020. The amount was $12.9 million in 2019, according to city records. Though RETT collections declined 12% in 2023 from 2022, they still exceeded the city’s forecast of $15 million by 152%. Buyers of free-market properties in Aspen must pay a 1.5% RETT at closing. One percent of the sale price goes to the city’s housing fund and the Wheeler Opera House fund collects 0.5% through the RETT.
Annual ACRA Awards Doled Out
The Aspen Chamber Resort Association gave out its annual awards during a luncheon in January, the Aspen Daily News reported. The 2023 Molly Campbell Service Award recipient was Donnie Lee, longtime general manager of The Gant Aspen. The winner of the inaugural Thrive Award is Ute Mountaineer, a family owned and operated retailer that has served the Aspen community since 1977. ACRA also recognized the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies as 2023 Nonprofit of the Year. The Business of the Year accolade is awarded to businesses that consistently provide outstanding quality, excellence and service in the Roaring Fork Valley and was given to Paradise Bakery.
Aspen Get Global Nod for Climate Work
The city of Aspen has been recognized as a global climate action leader as part of 119 cities across the globe to receive a top score on climate action, the Aspen Times reported. The nonprofit Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) recognized Aspen for taking bold leadership on environmental action and transparency.
The city in 2007 created its first climate action plan, an early adopter for setting forth specific actions to achieve its greenhouse-gas reduction goals. A few highlights of the city’s climate work since then include: In 2012, the city banned single-use grocery bags from Aspen grocery; in 2015, the city transitioned the municipal electrical system to 100% renewable energy; in 2022, city council passed a Building IQ ordinance to assist property owners in reducing their energy use as the built environment in Aspen accounts for 57% of greenhouse gas emissions; and In 2023, council passed an organics waste diversion ordinance to reduce the amount of food waste going into the landfill.
Snowmass Village
Snowmass Purchases Homes from Aspen School District
Snowmass Village will purchase an eight housing-unit building at the Faraway Apartments from the Aspen School District (ASD) to be used as workforce housing for the town, the Aspen Times reported. Snowmass Town Council approved the $4.66 million contract for the building. It was one of two buildings ASD had purchased from the Timbers Club in Snowmass for $10.5 million in March 2023 to add to its district employee housing stock. The school district will keep the remaining 10-unit building but need to sell these eight because its deed-restrictions were too limiting for school district employees.
The town sought to purchase the 8-unit building, which is deed-restricted, from the school district to ensure they remain deed-restricted and to add to the town’s 2021 goal of building or acquiring 185 workforce housing units. The Faraway Apartments were initially built in 2004 as employee housing mitigation for the Timbers Club, a private residence club across the street from the apartments.
Snowmass Center Listed for $38.2 Million
A Snowmass Village community gathering place that includes a supermarket, pharmacy, hardware store and post office has hit the market for $38.92 million, the Aspen Daily News reported. That’s more than twice the amount the ownership acquired the complex for in 2016, but the property comes with redevelopment potential that it did not have eight years ago.
Approvals are in place to build 64 free-market residential units and 10 employee-housing units and to redevelop commercial space of up to 58,433 square feet. The employee housing units combine to encompass more than 11,300 square feet. The existing Snowmass Center doesn’t have a residential component.
Basalt
Interactive Playground to Open in June
An interactive rainbow trout sculpture-play feature will be the focal point of a $600,000 upgrade to the playground at the popular Arbaney Park set to open in June, the Aspen Daily News reported. The innards of the fish include a climbing rope with discs, a climbing net, and a climbing wall with grips. On the tail end is a slide.
The upgrade has been in the works for years, but the town government had its sights set on first completing the Basalt River Park along the Roaring Fork. The plan features separated play areas for kids 2 through 5 years of age and 6 through 12, with a “universal carousel” — a modernist take on a round, flat merry-go-round — in between. Equipment includes bowls that kids can plop into and spin; fish on a spring to ride; a play hut; swing set; stilts, podiums, and balance beams to crawl on; and unusual-looking waterlily posts to hop along.
Daycare Becoming a Reality in Basalt
The Basalt Town Council approved a contract with the RA Nelson construction company to finish out the interior of a 4,000-square-foot space for a daycare at the new Stott’s Mill subdivision near Basalt High School, the Aspen Daily News reported. The council required the developer to provide a roughed-out space for potential daycare use when the subdivision was approved.
Officials stumbled but eventually secured Blue Lake Preschool and the Basalt Education Foundation to sign a sublease for the space. Basalt has signed a lease with the developer. The town will sublease the space at a lower cost to Blue Lake Preschool and the education foundation. The rate will be 80% of the market rate for rents for daycare spaces in the midvalley. It will start at about $2,400 per month and go up 3% annually. The deal hinged on finding funds to finish out the interior space. The Colorado Department of Local Affairs provided an $800,000 matching grant. Pitkin County commissioners approved $250,000 in matching funds while Basalt chipped in $50,000.
Brewery Sells to Westbound and Down
A locally founded beermaker in Aspen and another one in Basalt are now under the new ownership of Westbound & Down Brewing Co., the Aspen Daily News reported. The transaction by Westbound & Down, which debuted its flagship brewery in Idaho Springs in 2015, included its gobbling up the Capitol Creek Brewery pub in the Willits Town Center, which is part of Basalt. It also bought Aspen Brewing’s production facility at the Aspen Airport Business Center and the Aspen Tap pub downtown. The seller was High Country Brewing LLC.
The acquisition expands Westbound & Down’s stable of locations to five in Colorado, which includes a pizzeria-brewpub in Lafayette and a taproom in downtown Denver. The additions of Aspen Brewing and Capitol Creek Brewery dovetail with the new ownership’s mission to have a presence in active mountain communities.
Carbondale
New Shelters Eyed for Migrants
The town of Carbondale is narrowing in on four shelter locations for up to 100 unhoused Venezuelan migrants who have arrived there this summer and fall, the Aspen Daily News reported. The town is planning to open a portion of its community meeting room in town hall as a nighttime shelter for about 20 people, as well as identifying two undisclosed locations for more migrants and a women-and-children’s housing center. The town will also continue using the Third Street Center as a shelter for the winter.
Third Street’s shelter operation was initially planned to be temporary, but the center has since agreed to extend its arrangement and will reduce its number of occupants from 60 to around 45.
There are more than 140 migrants in Carbondale, though not all of them have since stayed in the valley. Migrants had been sleeping in cars and tents near the Highway 133 bridge before the Third Street Center opened as a temporary shelter.
Water Rights Abandoned for Proposed Reservoir
A company with ties to oil shale development in western Colorado has dropped its attempt to maintain water rights for a proposed reservoir on Thompson Creek, Aspen Journalism reported.
Puckett Land Co. on filed a motion to dismiss its diligence application for conditional water rights that date to 1966 and are associated with the construction of a 23,983-acre-foot reservoir on Thompson Creek, a tributary of the Crystal River just south of Carbondale.
The Greenwood Village-based company holds interests in 17,500 acres of land in Garfield and Rio Blanco counties. The decision to voluntarily cancel these water rights was for business purposes, with adverse current economic conditions for oil shale production. The proposed reservoir site had been on BLM land in Pitkin County within the boundaries of an area that the U.S. Forest Service and BLM are proposing to withdraw from eligibility for new oil and gas leases.
Glenwood Springs
$50 Million Grant Awarded to Bridge Project
The Biden-Harris Administration has awarded a $49.68 million grant to Glenwood Springs for the South Bridge project, the Aspen Daily News reported. The money will come from the Rural Surface Transportation Grant Program. The Glenwood Springs bridge project is one of 18 initiatives nationwide receiving money from a pool of $645.3 million to help communities around the United States complete transportation projects that will increase mobility, improve safety, and generate regional economic growth in rural areas.
The Glenwood Springs South Bridge project — estimated earlier this year to cost $75 million — will construct a new bridge across the Roaring Fork River and provide access between Highway 82 and neighborhoods west of the river near the airport. The project will create a second paved evacuation route to connect the residents of the city’s southern corridor with Highway 82.
Senior Housing Development Approved
Glenwood Springs City Council approved a new affordable housing project called The Benedict, which is a 34-unit senior housing project for residents aged 55 years and older, the Glenwood Springs Post Independent reported. The applicants and developers of the project are Catholic Charities Housing, with BlueLine Development. Catholic Charities Housing owns and operates around 2,000 apartments across the northern half of Colorado, including three projects in the valley.
The $23 million project consists of a four-story building that would be built on a currently vacant half-acre lot on the corner of Midland and 27th Street. The building would sit a quarter-mile from the 27th street underpass and RFTA Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) station. Another feature of the Benedict project includes 42 parking spaces, some of which will be in an underground parking garage.
Pitkin County
Healthy Community Funds Doles Out $1.5 Million
Nearly 70 nonprofit organizations rang in the new year knowing they’ve got a head start in collecting donations, thanks to Pitkin County, the Aspen Daily News reported. The county recently doled out $1.51 million in 2024 Healthy Community Fund grants ranging from $500 to $80,000, with Mountain Valley Development Services receiving the most funding. The funds are helping organizations with missions as diverse as getting surplus food from farmers into the hands of the hungry to protecting the environment to promoting the health and well-being of Roaring Fork Valley residents.
Additionally, three collaborative grants were awarded to nonprofits working together, including.
The Farm Collaborative and Lift-Up receiving $100,000; Aspen Youth Center and Aspen Family Connections receiving $100,000 and Raising a Reader and Focused Kids receiving $100,000.
Property Taxes Increase 30% to 80%
Property tax bills were delivered in January and a review by the Aspen Daily News showed increases ranging from 30% to 80% for property in Eagle and Pitkin counties, the newspaper reported. In Pitkin County, tax bills surged from 43% for an infamous McMansion on Red Mountain to 75% for a longtime local’s home in Brush Creek Village. Tax bills didn’t increase by as large of percentages as property values, but that’s probably of little consolation to taxpayers facing double-digit percentage hikes.
Many taxing districts in the Roaring Fork Valley kept their millage rate the same for 2023 and took advantage of the higher property values to collect more revenues. Various boards of directors said their costs of providing services were on the rise, so they needed the extra funds.
Lift Ticket Price Reaches $244 Per Day
Prices for daily passes at Western ski resorts ranged anywhere from $225 to $299 for adult lift tickets during the holidays, the Aspen Daily News reported. Those prices are for walk-up, single-day tickets. Vail Mountain retained the crown for having the highest ticket price at $299 when purchased on Dec. 27, 2023. Beaver Creek was right behind its sister resort with a single-day ticket price of $284.
Meanwhile, Aspen Skiing Co. charged $244 for its single-day lift ticket price, according to its website. SkiCo charges the same for a lift ticket at its four ski areas — Aspen Mountain, Snowmass, Aspen Highlands, and Buttermilk. Skico charged $229 during the holiday week in 2022. Elsewhere in Colorado, lift ticket prices for Dec. 27 were $288 at Steamboat; $279 at Breckenridge; $269 same day at Keystone; $194 same day at Crested Butte; $225 at Telluride; $214 at Copper Mountain; $259 at Winter Park; $189 at Eldora; and $152 at Arapahoe Basin. Discounts were given for online purchasing. Sunlight Mountain Resort outside of Glenwood Springs is charging $85.
Pitkin County Residents Pleased with Services
Pitkin County residents gave high marks to the county for the services the government provides, but fewer than 50% said the county is “moving in the right direction” and only 39% view the five elected commissioners as “effective,” according to results of a new survey reported by the Aspen Daily News.
Residents also delivered potentially contradictory marching orders to county officials by naming the need to address affordable housing and the need to manage growth as the two highest priorities. More than 53% of respondents identified “efforts to address affordable housing” as one of their three highest priorities for the county over the next two years. That ranked as the highest priority overall. It was closely followed by “efforts in managing growth.” That was selected as a top three priority by nearly 49% of respondents.
X Games to Charge for Premium Seat
X Games 2024 will charge a fee for prime viewing spots during the competition this year, the Aspen Daily News reported. It will cost between $30 and $70 for adults to watch slopestyle, knuckle huck, big air and superpipe competitions from the corrals at the bottom of the courses, Valerie Ryan of Sports Content Creation LLC told the Pitkin County commissioners in an informational session about the X Games, which will be held Jan. 26-28.
The ticket price will depend on the timing of the event. The daytime events on Saturday and Sunday will cost $30 for adults and $25.50 for children; the nighttime events Friday through Sunday will be $45 for adults and $38.25 for children; and a corral ticket for the premier event, the superpipe competition on Saturday and Sunday evenings, will be $70 for adults and $59.50 for children.
Stubbie’s Extends Its Lease
In the Pitkin County commissioners’ last meeting of 2023, the board agreed to extend its lease for Stubbies Sports Bar and Eatery in Basalt, the Aspen Daily News reported. The extension of the three-year lease with two one-year options that can be exercised at the bar owner’s sole discretion. If there is a proposal to transfer the lease to another party, in case of a sale, then the commissioners would be able to revisit the agreement.
The staff suggested two one-year leases. County Manager Jon Peacock advised the board to keep the county’s options flexible in case the 3,335-square-foot space is needed in coming years for workspace for county staffers. The bar and restaurant have been located along Emma Road right off of Highway 82 in Basalt since 1997 — long enough that the building where it is located is informally known as the Stubbies Building. It’s popular for affordable pricing on food and beverage.