“Some place warm, a place where the beer flows like wine, where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano. I’m talking about a little place called Aspen.”
Remember that quote from the hilarious movie, Dumb and Dumber? I love that movie and the parody on Aspen. A question I get on a very regular basis from my clients is Will Crested Butte Become the Next Aspen? There are so many reasons why it won’t, in my opinion. The biggest reason I don’t think CB could become Aspen is because we don’t have the developable land needed to grow to that level of a community. Did you know that most of our open land is permanently protected? We have a ton of acreage that is permanently protected in either ranching conservation easements, Crested Butte Land Trust, 35 acre subdivisions that can’t be subdivided further, National Forest and Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
However, there are two significant development sites in Mt. Crested Butte:
1. Upper Prospect – This new development includes 44+ homesites at the top of the Prospect Lift, plus an 80-100 room hotel that replace the Umbrella Bar. The same developers will also develop the base of the Gold Link and that could be a mix of commercial and residential property.
2. The Village at Mt. Crested Butte – Formally known as the North Village, this new subdivision could include 342 residential units, hotel and dormitory lodging plus 134,000 gross floor area of commercial space. The town council recently suggested that this project goes to the approval process.
Mt. Crested Butte is also working on their Master Plan and you can review the draft here: Mt. Crested Butte Draft Master Plan
Crested Butte has a lot of growth left but the other item that differentiates Crested Butte from Aspen is accessibility. There is not an Interstate within several hours of Crested Butte, the Gunnison Airport doesn’t come close to servicing the amount of flights like Aspen (yet) and Crested Butte only has one ski area where there are three in the Aspen Valley.
The average sales price in Aspen is $14.88 million! The average sales price of residential property sold this year in Crested Butte so far is $1.17 million.
So, I am saying there is a chance but it is a long shot!