A local CEO and his wife listed their Cherry Hills Village mansion for $7.2 million, three years after buying it and completing a down-to-the-studs remodel.
“Itap a Colorado house. Itap a mountain house,” said Hamid Akhavan. “You’re in Cherry Hills Village, but it feels like you’re living in Vail.”
Akhavan is CEO of EchoStar Capital, the investment arm of EchoStar Corp., the parent company of Dish TV, Sling TV and Boost Mobile.
He and his wife, Joanne, purchased the home in 2023 for $3.2 million. The lot convinced them. The 0.87-acre property sits on a high point overlooking Woodie Hollow Park with panoramic mountain views.
The elevation also allowed for something unusual in the neighborhood: a six-car garage, built on two levels and tucked into the hillside so it is barely noticeable from the street.
“Garages are stacked. You swing around and go underneath,” Hamid Akhavan said.
The ceilings are tall enough that a buyer could add lifts for four more cars.
What began as a plan to update the 1990s-built house became a rebuild and expansion. The work took two years — longer than expected.
“It was beyond remodeling. It was almost reconstruction,” Hamid Akhavan said.
At one point, the couple considered simply reselling the house rather than continuing.
“We had fallen in love with the vision of what the house could be,” Hamid Akhavan said. “We had to do it, even if it meant we’d lose money on it.”
Crews took out interior walls and support pillars, replacing them with steel beams that run the length of the roof. This required opening the exterior walls and using industrial cranes to install the beams.
The finished home is 8,239 square feet, with an open main floor that provides sight lines to almost every room except the bedroom suites.
The kitchen was a main focus of the redesign. Joanne Akhavan, who likes to cook for crowds, wanted a space that could seat 14 to 16 people built around a Wolf range, Sub-Zero refrigeration, six refrigerator drawers and two dishwashers, plus a separate scullery and butler’s pantry so hosts can prep without abandoning guests.
“No wasted space in this house,” she said. “We’ve moved 13 times. We’ve never had a house laid out this well.”
Obtaining materials added time. The Akhavans wanted divider-free panoramic windows and needed to add to the slate roof to match the home’s style, eventually tracking down slate from Vermont.
Joanne Akhavan said finding countertop slabs large enough to avoid seams also took searching.
By the time the work was finished, the Akhavans had already settled in a new home.
“It doesn’t make sense to move now,” Hamid Akhavan said. “It always takes a year after you start sleeping in a space before you’ve opened all the boxes and developed a routine.”
Listing agent Casey Miller of LIV Sotheby’s International Realty said the home’s entrance through mahogany front doors sets the tone.
“You immediately feel like you’re in an estate that is positioned on 10-plus acres,” Miller said. “The views are forever, and they are amazing.”
Miller said the main living areas were reoriented to the west, toward a wall of glass. “You don’t realize it until you look out the back,” he said.
The lower level walks out at grade and includes four more en suite bedrooms, which Miller said could suit a large family.
A main-floor primary suite and second bedroom make the home workable for empty nesters who don’t want stairs, while a finished theater and turnkey condition could appeal to an executive buyer who doesn’t want to take on a renovation.
“You’d be hard-pressed to find an existing home for sale, at any price point, that is as thoroughly updated as this one,” Miller said.
“Add in the location and the view, and truly this home could not be replicated.”
Joanne Akhavan said she was overwhelmed early on by the scope of the project, and her vision for the house evolved as the work continued.
“I can’t believe itap the same house,” she said. “We’re sad to part with it. We love the way it came out.”
