Aspen – The tables and chairs in the Main Street Bakery and Cafe are scarred and rickety. The water glasses are plastic. And as the front door jangles open, customers get a helping of familiarity: “Hi there, Mike.” “How ya doin’, Bill?”
In a haves and have-nots town with one supermarket but at least five fur shops, this 18-year-old cafe, with its “Tourists Treated Same as Home Folks” sign, is an increasingly rare landmark on the resort- community retail landscape.
Sky-high commercial rents, a growing number of mostly absent second- and third-home owners, a commuting working class and the shopping proclivities of the super-wealthy are blamed for squeezing out businesses that cater to locals or are considered the types of places that are key for a community: drugstores, movie theaters, bookstores and restaurants where the daily specials are written on brown paper bags or where a $100 bill will cover a dinner date – with change.
Ted Summers, floor manager at the Ute Mountaineer, boasts that the longtime Aspen outdoor-gear business is the only place in town to buy “real shoes.”
But he bemoans the fact that other businesses geared to locals haven’t hung on.
“I don’t know how many more we can lose before this place loses its soul,” Summers said, shaking his head and his long goatee.
“Empty” and “ghostly”
“It is probably more extreme here, but it is not at all just an Aspen phenomenon,” said Pitkin County Commissioner Mick Ireland, who uses attention-getting terms like “empty,” “ghostly” and “Japanese horror-film set” to describe some resort downtowns as he travels the country to give talks about the threats facing these places and about how much they can lose in their commercial bases before they lose their collective souls.
In Aspen, where the average yearly wage is about $40,000 and downtown retail space can rent for as much as $280 a square foot, real estate offices, sticker- shock art galleries, chichi cashmere and jewelry shops and high-volume national chains are pushing out the less-profitable shops that are beloved by locals.
A bookstore that makes $100,000 a year can’t compete for space with a realty office that clears $4 million. A drugstore can’t sell enough toothpaste and razor blades to keep out a boutique that charges $20,000 per designer coat.
The problem of “wants- based” businesses crowding out “needs-based” enterprises has also popped up in Sun Valley, Idaho; Vail; Santa Fe; Monterey, Calif.; and even Venice, Italy. That translates to an abundance of glam furs and hand-stitched pumps. But try to find gym shorts or a lawn rake.
Officials in Aspen have spent several decades working on measures to maintain a community inside a resort and the past several years studying how to keep downtown Aspen an economically healthy social center.
Movie theater in jeopardy
Aspen’s long commitment to affordable housing – more than 2,800 units so far – ensures a core of residents to support locals’ businesses. And the incorporation of arts and cultural amenities such as the Aspen Institute, the art museum, the music school and a host of festivals has ensured the town has a year-round economy – a vision that goes back to the days when 10th Mountain Division veterans first recognized the potential of the mountains surrounding this mining town.
Two years ago, Aspen slowed a downtown retail slide by prohibiting any new real estate businesses from occupying street- level storefronts in the downtown core.
Now, the board is finalizing an agreement that will create a public/private partnership to keep the only remaining movie theater in business. The art deco Isis Theater had been in danger of being sold and scrapped for another use like the nearby century-old Aspen Drug. Last year, the popular drugstore was turned into a “discovery center” to sell time shares in Snowmass Village.
Among others, plans have also been discussed to set aside space downtown for “community” businesses and to launch a business incubator to help local craftspeople take their wares from street-market booths to something more permanent.
Mayor Helen Klanderud said there is no shortage of ideas, and she doesn’t view the situation as direly as some residents. She points out that some of the high- end businesses such as Amen Wardy Home, the Cos Bar and the Golden Bough are locally owned and that sales-tax revenues are healthy.
“When I came here 35 years ago, people would go to Denver to stock up on food, alcohol and clothing,” she said. “That’s what some people have forgotten or don’t know because they weren’t here. In some respects, it’s not all that different.”
Vail saves a bookstore
Elsewhere in the state, Crested Butte and Telluride are facing the same problems with balancing commercial businesses in the downtown cores and, like Aspen, are considering ways to keep vital retail businesses from being overrun.
Vail voters recently approved a downtown development that will include a public plaza with the revitalizing draws of a skating rink, movie theater and bowling alley.
Vail is tackling the commercial business problem with a focus group, and its residents – from bellhops to corporate executives – recently took action to keep what they consider an important part of the community. They chipped in $75,000 to keep a cherished bookstore from disappearing after a rent increase.
“I don’t think people realize how much of a community is in Vail,” said Robert Aikens, owner of the Verbatim Books store that recently moved to a new location after the fund drive.
“I was ready to close my doors in March, but there were people who literally said, ‘Vail has to have a bookstore,”‘ Aikens said.
Aspen Thrift Shop thrives
Aspen is in danger of losing the Explore Booksellers and Bistro, a cozy book-stuffed historic home on Main Street that opened when Aspen was still a funky, fledgling ski town.
A “For Sale” sign out front and a $5.2 million price tag have some residents in fear of losing another local institution.
“It’s like our Tattered Cover, and I’m afraid there is a good chance it won’t remain a bookstore,” said Richard Shively as he nursed a cup of coffee in the bakery next door.
Several blocks away, the Aspen Thrift Shop, which has been wedged into a prime piece of city-owned downtown real estate for 50 years, is one of the busiest places in town – and an indicator of real community needs.
Customers in the nonprofit shop riffle the “$2 and up” sweaters and crowd past one another to examine the lamps and dish sets.
Across the street, no one is venturing into off-season-deserted Gucci to try on white mink boots or giant Dior eyeglasses.
“It’s crucial. It’s just crucial to have this store,” said Joanne Walpole, one of the 70 volunteers who keep the shop going. A nearby shopper added, “Everybody would be naked if it wasn’t for the store.”
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com.
