What the Aspen Club's Permit Deadline Reveals About Buying an Approved Project in Aspen

The building permit for the Aspen Club clubhouse on Ute Avenue now has a fixed end date. If work on the club building has not restarted by Dec. 31, 2026, the permit becomes invalid. The city's chief building official, Bonnie Muhigirwa, has called that date a "drop-dead" deadline, according to reporting by Aspen Journalism published in the Aspen Daily News on Oct. 25.

The club closed for redevelopment in 2016 and has been closed for a decade. Its current ownership group bought it at a 2021 foreclosure auction. The project shows how value works in a market where approvals are scarce. The buyers did pay for land, a half-finished concrete-and-steel clubhouse and 14 partly built townhomes. Most of what they paid for, though, was a set of approvals and permits, and those carry deadlines and obligations. Anyone underwriting an entitled but unbuilt project in Aspen is mostly buying time on those permits.

What $52.59 million bought in 2021

The Aspen Times reported that the only bid at the foreclosure auction was $52.59 million, placed Jan. 6, 2021. The buyers were Meriwether Companies, Revere Capital and Fireside Investments. The site looks much as it did when they bought it. Fourteen partly built townhomes line the edges, and a 50-year-old clubhouse frame stands in the middle.

The approvals came from a 2010 city ordinance. Before then, the club could run athletic facilities in a residential zone. Adding lodging required more, including a Specially Planned Area designation. That tool was meant for projects that didn't fit existing zoning but could offer a community benefit. A few years after the Aspen Club approval, City Council repealed the SPA chapter from the land use code. The approved plan allows 14 townhomes and six fractional-ownership condos in the club building, all approved for timeshare use. In a residential cul-de-sac, that approval came out of a review process the city no longer offers.

That makes the permits the key to the asset. Colorado's Vested Property Rights Act sets a default vesting period of three years for a site-specific development plan. Section 24-68-104 says that period "shall not be extended by any amendments to a site specific development plan unless expressly authorized by the local government." Local governments may agree to longer vesting through development agreements adopted as legislative acts. Section 24-68-103 says that failing to meet the conditions of an approval forfeits the vested right.

Muhigirwa connected that framework to the building permit. "Expiring a permit is a very punitive and final act," she told Aspen Journalism. The article reported that expiration can affect a project's vested rights and approvals, which can force developers to redo plans to meet current code. At the Aspen Club, current code means a code that no longer has the chapter the original approval relied on.

The redesign took longer than the purchase price suggests

After the 2021 purchase, the new owners kept Oz Architecture and PCL, who had both worked on the project before. They spent about a year and a half revising the plans, which went to the city in 2022. The new design gave more of the clubhouse to dining, socializing and rejuvenation and less to exercise. It also changed the townhomes to meet energy-efficiency and wellness certifications.

The land-use approvals left room for that. In April 2022, land use consultant Chris Bendon of BendonAdams wrote to the city that the approvals "do not restrict the club from changing the fitness, training, personal health, or programming within the club." The building permits were a different matter. Each change needed a change order, and the project has five permits: one for the clubhouse, one for the workforce housing and one for each of the three townhome clusters.

Here is how long each change order took, based on city permit records reported by Aspen Journalism:

The city's published timelines, as the article cites them, allow 16 to 18 weeks for the first review of a major change order and eight to 10 weeks for each later round. The clubhouse redesign took more than three years, almost as long as the original clubhouse permit took to approve. Muhigirwa called the timeline "not unheard of for complex change orders" but "longer than most," and the article noted the application spent significant time in both the city's and the applicant's hands.

The review time also slowed construction. A builder whose floor plan is about to change has little reason to put up walls. By the end of 2023, according to Aspen Journalism's reporting in the Aspen Daily News, an architect emailed a city staffer that the owners were "getting a little nervous" about building before they had permits in hand. The site then shut down for more than half of 2024, and the developers had to ask for an extension to keep their permits from expiring. So the decision to redesign cost about three years of review, and while it was under review, the old plan couldn't really be built either.

The city stopped accepting minimal progress

For a while, the city was flexible. After the 2024 extension, it treated small amounts of progress on any part of the project as enough to keep all five permits active. For example, work on the townhomes also kept the clubhouse permit alive. That flexibility has ended. "Previously, we would see a little bit of electrical work being done, and then nothing for six months, and then another tiny bit of framing," Muhigirwa said in September. "This needs to be a real return to work on the site."

The extension the city granted in mid-April has two conditions. Substantial work has to continue on the townhomes, including reroofing, framing and flashing. Work on the club building also has to restart by Dec. 31. The city also ruled out redesign as a way to get more time. "Requesting amendments to land use approvals or submitting additional change orders will not constitute good cause for justifying additional extensions," Muhigirwa wrote, and she called further extensions unlikely.

There are signs that work is underway. Crossland Construction replaced PCL as general contractor this summer. In August it filed a construction management plan and a schedule with more than 2,300 milestones. The city has inspected concrete slabs in the club building within the past few weeks. Muhigirwa said she believes the deadline is achievable. She also said a site office and workers alone don't count as revival, and that if activity falls into "a gray area," the city will have to decide "when is enough enough."

Some obligations expire on a fixed date

A stalled schedule also changes the economics of the community commitments built into the approval. The 2010 ordinance requires free office space for two nonprofits, millions of dollars in facility upgrades, some community access whether or not people are members, and 12 two-bedroom units of affordable housing on site.

One of those commitments has an end date. Each fractional-interest sale carries a 0.25% assessment for a Community Health and Recreation Fund. The assessment is valid for 25 years from approval and sunsets in 2035. No timeshare sale can close until the unit receives a certificate of occupancy. Based on Crossland's schedule, the fund could collect for about four of its 25 years. For the project, that means the fund will collect for far fewer years than planned. For a buyer of approved projects generally, it shows that an approval's obligations and benefits can run on dates fixed in 2010, no matter when the building is finished.

The schedule also shows what a decade of exposure means. Crossland's first work on the townhomes includes structural investigations, possible corrections and weatherproofing. The city has said it is not generally concerned about the existing structures. Final inspections are targeted for the second quarter of 2029 for the townhomes, the fourth quarter of 2029 for the affordable housing and the third quarter of 2030 for the clubhouse, with the last work finished around January 2031. The city describes the schedule as a planning document, not a binding commitment. The affordable housing can't start until the clubhouse pool is well along, because staging for the clubhouse overlaps the workforce-housing parcel.

Questions before pricing an approved Aspen project

The Aspen Club is unusually complicated, but the same issues apply to any entitled, partly built or stalled site in Aspen:

1. Can the approval be obtained again today? If it came from a process the code no longer has, such as the SPA, the paperwork may be the most valuable thing on the site.
2. How long is the permit clock, and what keeps it running? The city once let minor work keep permits active. It no longer does, so find out exactly what counts as activity before closing.
3. How many change orders does the buyer's plan need? A major change order can take years of review. Base the timeline on the number of review rounds, not on the first-round estimate.
4. Which obligations run on fixed dates? Assessments, housing commitments and community-access terms in an approval ordinance may have sunsets or triggers that don't move when construction is delayed.
5. What has a decade of exposure done to the structures? Price in structural investigation before resuming any building that has sat open.

This post is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Anyone weighing an entitled property should confirm vesting, permit status and approval conditions with a land-use attorney and the City of Aspen.

FAQ

Does a Colorado approval stay valid indefinitely? No. Under C.R.S. 24-68-104, a vested property right lasts three years by default, though a local government can agree to a longer period through a development agreement adopted as a legislative act.

Can a project get more time by revising its plans? At the Aspen Club, the city has said no. New change orders or land-use amendments will be handled separately and won't count as good cause for another extension.

When could the Aspen Club reopen? Crossland's schedule targets around January 2031 for completion, and the city treats it as a planning document.

If you are pricing an entitled site, a stalled project or development land anywhere in the Roaring Fork Valley, Gabe Molnar can help you work out what the approvals are worth, how much time is left on the permits and what review may cost before you make an offer. Let's Connect.