Face the State Staff Editorial
Looking for a million dollar place in Aspen? If so, think Brady Bunch and get ready for avocado appliances, green shag carpet, and bad architecture. You’ll have city leaders to thank.
A recent ordinance passed by the Aspen City Council treats any property built prior to 1978 as a protected historic site—unless the property owner can prove otherwise. Structures older than 30 years will be subject to city review before owners can alter or demolish them in any way.
We hope you love orange linoleum. But if you want to change light fixtures or add a fence, you may want to contact your lawyer first.
Previously, a more liberal city policy held that only buildings 40 years and older were subject to such restrictions, and even then, the burden was on the city—not the property owner—to prove historic status. City leaders said the change was necessary because not enough was being done to preserve recent city history.
According to statistics provided to the media by Amy Guthrie, Aspen’s historic preservation officer, 257 Victorian buildings from Aspen’s first 13 years have been preserved, compared with just 22 buildings from all years after that.
If Aspen’s preservation efforts were comprised of reasonable efforts encouraging cost-effective conservation, we might be supportive. In reality, however, these restrictions serve only to make one of America’s most expensive cities even more cost-prohibitive.
Now property owners seeking to demolish or alter their 30-year-old properties will have to jump through city hoops that begin with an application for landmark review followed by an appeals process than can take up to six months. If granted the landmark status, property owners will have to seek approval for almost any change to their property.
Such designations in other Colorado cities have limited the rights of homeowners to alter outside exteriors in any way without first getting government protection. Boulder is a perfect example -- lots of shabby exteriors, since the outside of homes is heavily regulated. But million-dollar interiors, where homeowners can actually keep their homes up-do-date.
Wealthy preservationists love the "historic" preservation policies, but middle class families despise them. Especially when they must to beg and plead to replace old drafty windows (as one Boulder family had to do a few years ago).
The movement to protect so-called historic buildings first boomed three decades ago as older buildings were razed to make way to newer, larger, or more efficient designs. No doubt, Colorado lost some architectural gems.
But it's difficult to get excited about a 1970's production home. And in Aspen, the consequences of the new policy will be extreme.
Already, Aspen restricts the size of new home builds and also frequently resorts to moratoriums on issuing building permits. Currently, the county has a banned any building on Aspen Mountain, Smuggler Mountain, or in nearby Castle Creek.
Now, this latest restriction will make housing even more expensive. Not only will the bureaucratic process be more difficult to maneuver, but the availability of “non-historic” land will also diminish substantially. Developers seeking to build higher density (and ideally less expensive) units will realistically only be able to seek out properties 29 years or younger for redevelopment. The market of available properties will have shrunk, and inevitably, prices will rise.
There will also be an interesting side effect. If Aspen is successful in preserving its past architecture, it will literally face a future that knows little to no new architecture from our current era. Future Aspen generations and tourists will be robbed of the great designs of contemporary architects. But at least Aspen will be able to preserve the romance and excitement of the early 1970's.
Aspen is too busy to worry about such details. This is a city that long ago forgot about making its town accessible to non-millionaires. It is, after all, home to the western U.S.’s most expensive residence, a $135 million 95-acre ranch owned by Saudi Prince Bandar.
For the rest of us, just a little warning: Learn to love Mr. Brady’s architecture.