Boston Celtics Owner Asks $45 Million for Downtown Aspen Building With Luxury Penthouse

An owner of the Boston Celtics is listing a mixed-use building with a luxury penthouse in Aspen, Colo., for $45 million. 

Known as Mountain Forge, the building in downtown Aspen was once owned by Francis Whitaker, a renowned blacksmith who died in the 1990s, records show. 

The sellers are Paul and Sandy Edgerley, who renovated the building as an investment.

It now contains a 3-bedroom residence, street-level offices, a rooftop deck and below-grade recreation space. In all, the building has about 10,500 square feet with approximately 2,600 square feet of outdoor space. 

Mr. Edgerley is one of the owners of the Celtics and a senior adviser at private-equity firm Bain Capital. Ms. Edgerley heads up the family’s real-estate investments in Aspen and Boston, where the couple opened the ‘Quin House, a private social club, in 2021. 

The Edgerleys, who live in Boston and have a home in Aspen’s Starwood community, bought the Mountain Forge property for $11.275 million in 2017, records show. Ms. Edgerley said the design was shaped by the pandemic, with offices on the street level and living space upstairs. A lower-level recreation space has a golf simulator, theater, arcade games and a catering kitchen. The street-level offices currently have two tenants, including the real-estate brokerage Compass, she said. 

In the penthouse, the living and dining rooms are separated by a floor-to-ceiling fireplace. The primary bedroom has his-and-hers closets and a marble bathroom. A secondary bedroom has a deck and views of Aspen Mountain and Red Mountain. There is also an office, Ms. Edgerley said, as well as a rooftop deck with a pool, a hot tub and an outdoor kitchen. There is a sunken patio off the lower-level recreation space.

In all, the project took four years, including planning and permitting, and cost more than $2,000 a square foot. Ms. Edgerley said they took pains to retain some original details in a section of the building that she said was Mr. Whitaker’s iron-forging studio. For example, they kept some metal jointing in place on the building’s exterior. 

In Aspen, luxury home-sale prices are on the upswing and there is little available inventory, said listing agent Carrie Wells of Coldwell Banker Mason Morse. She said inventory for single-family homes is down about 60% year-over-year and condo inventory is down more than 80% year-over-year. A temporary building moratorium in Aspen has exacerbated the supply-demand imbalance, she said. 

“We’ve seen sales in the core of Aspen that have exceeded $5,000 to $6,000 a square foot,” she said. “So if you look at how this building would be used as a residence, to be able to control the commercial spaces, that’s very unique.” 

By E.B. Solomont I  The Wall Street Journal I April 27, 2022