If Aspen Were A Game Of Monopoly …
Editor’s note: The following story was originally published as “Who Owns Aspen?” in the summer 2024 edition of Local magazine, a product of Silver News LLC, also the owner of the Aspen Daily News. The story first came out in June and has been revised and updated.
Developer Mark Hunt is the largest stakeholder of commercial property in downtown Aspen’s 16-block core, based on a review of Pitkin County property records.
Hunt-controlled limited liability companies are linked to approximately 185,000 square feet downtown, putting him in charge of more than 15% of the core’s 1.2 million square feet of total retail and restaurant space. With a collective fair market value in the neighborhood of $220 million, those properties make Hunt’s downtown portfolio the most valuable.
Keep in mind these figures do not include residential properties downtown, like the $20 million and $30 million penthouses (the city now prohibits penthouses downtown) Nor do they consider such major hotels as the Little Nell, Limelight, Hotel Jerome, St. Regis Aspen and W Hotel.
What downtown Aspen will look like in five, 10 or 15 years depends much on what Hunt, a Chicago developer who started buying property in Aspen in 2009, and his collaborators do. His highest-profile collaborator is RH, formerly known as Restoration Hardware; in 2021, the two announced their partnership to develop an “Aspen Ecosystem.”
The publicly traded home-furnishings company, based in Corte Madera, California, has made $140 million in capital contributions to the Aspen Ecosystem’s real estate and development, according to regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. RH’s initial contribution was $105 million.
Under the RH flag, the company and Hunt are redeveloping the former Bidwell Building, located at the corner of Galena Street and Cooper Avenue walking mall, into a three-level RH Bespoke Gallery with a restaurant, retail and skylights.
The core and shell work for that project should be done by summer’s end, according to the city’s chief building inspector. After that work is complete, the interior buildout begins.
The building will be called the “Mountain House,” RH Chairman and CEO Gary Friedman told investors during an earnings call held in June.
“It’s on the best corner in Aspen,” he said. “It will be a three-level experience and two levels of retail. And we're going to, I think, get a whole world of RH kind of concept there because you get such a global customer coming into Aspen, a wealthy and affluent global customer. And we’ve got a great restaurant and hospitality experience. So that’s on track for next year, right?”
Though not part of the Aspen Ecosystem, also on the Cooper Avenue pedestrian mall is where the vaunted Red Onion tavern, which closed in December 2020, is being redeveloped. Hunt is behind that project and the one next door — the creation of the Paul JAS Center, an education facility and performance venue for Jazz Aspen Snowmass, whose founder and CEO, Jim Horowitz, recently said would open sometime in 2025. The shell and core work also are nearing completion for the Red Onion and Paul JAS Center.
Elsewhere in the Aspen ecosystem is the unbuilt 20-room RH Guesthouse, RH Bath House & Spa, and a restaurant and cafe, a project inching toward fruition on the site of the former Crystal Palace on East Hyman Avenue.
At the earnings conference, Friedman cited the COVID-19 pandemic, challenging city building regulations and changing interest rates as reasons for falling behind on the ecosystem development, which also includes an unbuilt residential project in the West End at the old Boomerang Lodge site, a mansion on Red Mountain and a residential project on East Cooper.
“We're taking our time a little bit,” Friedman said. “We don't think that there's a long-term value issue with anything in Aspen. If anything, we've had great timing. We invested before the COVID boom. I mean … before anybody had clarity on that. So we believe in our portfolio and investment.
“We've made probably two or three times our money already. So if we wanted to liquidate our portfolio today, everything we have is worth a heck of a lot more. But we didn't just do it for that. I mean, we did see what we can learn about the idea to face in some places and so on and so forth, but we're excited about it. We'd like to go a little faster.”
Notable progress has been happening across East Hyman from both the RH hotel project and the old Motherlode building (which Hunt owns), where the Gravity Haus group is redeveloping Hunt’s Wheeler Square Building, once known as “The Compound” for its Mexican food restaurant, poolhall, and smoking and cocktail lounges. The Gravity Haus social club will have a healthier bent with fitness rooms, wellness features, co-working space, and a restaurant and cafe serving organic food. RH is not involved in that project.
Separate from his endeavor with RH, Hunt is behind numerous LLCs that own buildings downtown. That includes 3,600 square feet of retail space in the Isis Theatre building on East Hopkins Avenue. It also includes the 18,400-square-foot building at the corner of East Hopkins Avenue and South Galena Street — home to Gucci, Lululemon, Balenciaga and Catch Steak. Two more Hunt-owned buildings on East Hyman Avenue, where his M Development offices — soon to be replaced by a Chanel store — are located above the space once used by Isberian Rug Co.
Amid all the plans, the Hopkins-Galena location — where The Gap once was — is the sole redevelopment project Hunt has completed downtown. But just outside the core, he built a Chase Bank on Main Street (after voters denied Hunt’s Base 2 lodge proposal in 2015) and is close to finishing the building that formerly housed Main Street Bakery.
Hunt also owns the building at 517 E. Hopkins Ave. (once home to the Aspen Daily News and once proposed for new city offices), and has an application for a small lodge in review for the Buckhorn Arms building across from City Market.
And, in what was a recent Monopoly-esque turn of events, Hunt’s M Development emerged as a potential buyer for retail properties on East Hyman Avenue and East Cooper Avenue.
As of Friday, the Souki family, under father Charif, still owned those properties that add up to more than 16,000 square feet of commercial space with a combined free-market value of $67.5 million.
Between Hunt’s swelling portfolio of downtown properties and the pandemic’s urban exodus to Aspen, the disproportionate number of upscale retailers and restaurants to locally owned and operated businesses has grown greater downtown. Hunt markets his property to upscale tenants, hardly a surprise given the sums he has spent on retail property.
From a big-picture perspective, commercial broker Lex Tarumianz said the wealth of the United States and other developed countries continues to grow, but “the downtown core of Aspen hasn’t gotten any bigger.” The result is more dollar pressure placed on an already tight market with demanding clientele.
“The trend is high-end retail and high-end restaurants and that trend is going to continue to a certain degree, and it’s been continuing” since the 1990s and “accelerated during the pandemic,” Tarumianz said.
Aspen’s overall retail economy plateaued in 2023 after setting a record for $1.2 billion in taxable sales in 2022. The downtown retail economy gets a lot of its juice from fashion-clothing stores ($152.3 million in total sales in 2023), jewelry ($65.6 million), and sports equipment and clothing ($73.1 million), based on city sales-tax reports.
The availability of retail space is scant, though it may appear more vacant because of major redevelopment projects still underway in the commercial core.
“It’s the same. Everybody wants to be in Aspen,” said Karen Setterfield, a commercial real estate broker. “Everyone will pay a lot to be in Aspen and there is very little available, if anything.”
The luxury brands also are expanding, she noted.
“Some of the big retailers are just getting bigger,” said Setterfield, “and that means they’re doing great.”
Gucci last year relocated from the Brand Building (which Hunt does not own) to Hunt’s South Galena building and expanded to more than 5,600 square feet. Setterfield said other upscale retailers are eyeing enlarged footprints downtown.
Because of the ecosystem endeavor — in addition to Hunt-controlled LLCs tied to $140 million to purchase downtown retail properties since 2010 — the developer has easily attracted more attention in recent years than such downtown stalwarts as the Hecht family and partners Tony Mazza and Frank Woods.
Companies behind properties connected to landlords Mazza and Woods, who’ve been in the commercial real estate business since the 1970s, own $162 million in downtown retail properties, which add up to more than 75,000 square feet. The Mazza-Woods connection had the second-largest downtown portfolio of retail space, based on property records.
The two launched M&W Properties in the 1970s. The Mill Street Plaza, home to restaurants (including Las Montanas, Campo de Fiori) and Louis Vuitton, has an actual value of $46.9 million assigned by the Pitkin County Assessor’s Office and is owned by an LLC controlled by Woods, who also controls the LLC behind the 13,036-square-foot Aspen Grove Mall at 525 E. Cooper Ave. ($43.9 million). They own some buildings together and other properties with partners. And like Hunt, Hecht and other investors, they own retail properties either skirting the downtown core or in the Clark’s Market complex and the immediate vicinity.
The Hecht family — Andy, a developer, landlord and name partner with Aspen law firm Garfield & Hecht PC, and Nikos, a developer and investor — is still a force in Aspen retail and owns one of the most prominent locations downtown: the 11,092-square-foot Volk Plaza, also known as “Paradise Corner” at Galena Street and Cooper Avenue.
Hecht and investors also own the historic Bowman building on Cooper Avenue and retail space on the same block, which is where New York-based Thor Equities replaced the old Boogie’s building with 10,281 square feet on its first two floors of retail, now art galleries. The actual value, according to the assessor’s office, is $36.6 million.
Other downtown property owners have deeper, decades-long ties and investments.
For example, the historic Ute City Banque building, at Galena Street and East Hyman Avenue, is owned by a family trust under the name of Anthony Cox. The California trust has owned it since it was acquired for $318,000 in November 1971. Their investment has grown — the assessor’s office placed an actual value of $27 million on it for 2024.
The Anthony Cox Living Trust owns the Aspen Block Building, which also is historic; the Cos Bar and the boutique Residence Hotel are located there. The assessor’s office places an actual value of $29.8 million on the 11,644-square-foot building, which the trust acquired for $940,000 in 1982.
Locally, a group headed by Jimmy Marcus owns a smattering of downtown property. Jimmy is the son of late developer Stephen Marcus, who built 10 commercial buildings downtown and another dozen residential.
On Jimmy’s list is the corner building on Aspen’s so-called restaurant row on Hopkins Avenue: the Katie Reed Plaza, home to Bear Den, Duemani and Hooch, along with retail and upstairs employee housing. Jimmy Marcus has worked with Hunt on some projects, such as the Red Onion-JAS and RH Gallery redevelopments on the Cooper Avenue Mall. Ajax Mountain Associates, which Jimmy controls, owns the Ajax Mountain building on East Durant Avenue.
Other buildings are owned by entities based in Denver and Glenwood Springs; Austin and Dallas, Texas; Scottsdale, Arizona; Arcadia, California; and elsewhere. Some of downtown’s historic landmarks, like the Wheeler Opera House and Aspen Elks, respectively are owned by the city and the building’s namesake organization. The Kobey Building and the old Aspen Drug building on the Hyman Avenue outdoor mall are under local ownership (Silver Slam Commercial and Woods Family LP, respectively). The nonprofit Aspen Film owns the theater space in the venerable Isis building (Hunt owns the retail space).
Other downtown properties are condo buildings divided up among multiple owners — such as the mixed-use property at 520 E. Cooper Ave. and the Tom Thumb building at South Mill Street and Hyman Avenue.
Hunt has been contacted about this article and other coverage but has not responded to recent messages.
By: Rick Carroll I Aspen Daily News I July 21, 2024