Feb. 24, 2004

The future of Aspen: Slice up the past

Realtors are selling off Aspen's historic hotels, one room at a time.

By Morten Lund

While it seems a bit early to forecast the arrival of flying maids in the town of Aspen, a look at the realty situation assures that this is more than remotely possible. The harbinger of this new and historic development is the Sardy House at Aspen, an icon of town history for, oh, at least seventy years, ever since three generations ago the mansion was erected to pacify the ego of a silver mine millionaire.

In mid-last century, former Aspen undertaker Tom Sardy bought the house while serving as the visible partner of Walter Paepcke in multiple Aspen real estate deals. Paepcke was also the founder of the Aspen cultural scene but was anxious to remain invisible in order to keep prices in the old mining town at rock bottom while he bought choice lots in the town.. To give him credit, Paepcke made a great and worthwhile show as the importer of culture to Aspen, restoring the town's magnificent Opera House and founding the Aspen Music Festival and the Aspen Institute, all leading to town comic. Steve Knowlton's often-repeated description of Aspen's benefactor as the "Mr. Possible who made all this Paepcke."

After Paepcke became a millionaire in Aspen realty, he bought a pink stucco mansion for his wife Pussy (causing the place to be known to all as "Pussy's Pink Palace") and Sardy, now also a millionaire, acquired the mansion that became known as "the Sardy House.." It retained the name after conversion to a luxury hotel that derived some notoriety by carting its clientele about in Aspen in a black limo.

But presently, the reality has been that selling Aspen hotels in the conventional way is not been very profitable because the sky-high price of real estate has leveled off. In response, the realtors of Aspen have outdone themselves. No longer content to offer "trifling ten million dollar Red Mountain mansion," as Aspen Times columnist Roger Marolt notes in a recent issue of the paper, brokers now go beyond the simple sale.

The trend is to convert hotels to timeshare operations. There have been timeshare condos in snow country for a generation but converting pre-existing hotels to timeshare status is something new. Potentially every historic inn, hotel and condo in Aspen could be sold to multiple owners at a profit beyond the wildest dreams of avarice. The Sardy House is the first former mansion to enter this new phase and is being offered at $750,000 for each two-week annual share. When all 25 shares are sold, Sardy House will gross (that seems to be the right word) $18,750.000, an amount that would have bought the entire town several times over fifty years ago.

Mary Hayes, the Times society columnist, confirms the trend, saying that a number of hotels in town including Little Nell and the St. Regis are being converted partially or wholly to timeshares. Mansions are next, obviously, and then, as Marolt prophesies, the solidly built outhouse in Wagner Park may well be converted to bring in $12 million as a potential timeshare dorm with central location and easy access to the slopes.

In the meantime, millionaires coming to Aspen looking for a house of their own are being directed "downvalley" in Pitkin County where there is real estate that they can afford. There, the millionaires will soon predictably be pricing out the Aspen employees who have over the last two decades been holing up downvalley at prices approaching normal. Maids and janitors will be forced to move to towns so far away that a downvalley commuter airline will have to be set up to bring them in every day. Luckily Aspen has the facilities for decent reception of those who fly in to make beds. They will be landing at spacious Sardy Airport.