Take a walk to the end of Ute Avenue east of Aspen, on a clear fall weekday afternoon, and peer into the gaping construction entrance upon the Aspen Club.
Notice the forklift, the crane, the excavator and the skid steer, all milling around the clubhouse; see the site office, which did not exist in the spring, and the dirt that has moved since last month. Listen, and you may hear the clang of metal against metal, the rhythmic warning of a truck in reverse; count the workers, in hard hats and safety vests, a dozen or so from your frame of view, and consider that the Aspen Club may well be on the verge of a revival — a decade into a construction closure that was supposed to last less than a year.
For nearly 40 years, this enclave in a residential cul-de-sac was the epicenter of Aspen’s health-and-fitness community. At its peak, the Aspen Club had more than 1,000 members and 200-plus employees, who flocked there for such varied offerings as tennis, pilates, weight-lifting, basketball, jogging and physical therapy, as well as a swimming pool and spa.
But the club closed for redevelopment in 2016 and hasn’t reopened since, its progress initially delayed by financial troubles, as funding dried up, contractors walked off the job unpaid and previous developers of the club remodel and new timeshares filed for bankruptcy before they could complete the club remodel and building of new timeshares.
A trio of investment groups — Meriwether Companies, Revere Capital and Fireside Investments — partnered to acquire the project in 2021 and took ownership shortly after it sold at a foreclosure auction for $52.6 million, and leaders of Meriwether and Revere Capital initially expressed confidence that they could finish the job. That summer, The Aspen Times reported the club might reopen by the winter of 2023-24; Meriwether managing partner Garrett Simon told the paper that work could begin in earnest in 2022, and that developers wanted to tweak the plans but anticipated that their vision would not deviate much from existing approvals.
Still, city review of the new plans would take years — a period during which construction activity increased, then shut down, before resuming with incremental progress and long stretches of minimal activity.
The site looks today much the same as it did before this trio bought it: a dirt-brown postage stamp surrounded by aspens and evergreens, 14 partially built townhomes around its edges and a 50-year-old clubhouse in the center with a hulking concrete-and-steel frame.
But now, there are signs of life. The city issued its final pending change order for plan revisions April 1, updating the building permit for a clubhouse redesign that an architect described once to city staff as a “modern performance center and wellness destination.”
Then, in mid-April, city chief building official Bonnie Muhigirwa granted developers the latest of several extensions on their building permits, with the provision that crews continue substantial work on the townhomes and resume construction on the clubhouse by the end of this year. A new general contractor, Crossland Construction, came on board this summer, with earnest communication that they’re eager to get to work and a schedule indicating that the entire project could be completed by early 2031.
“We are looking forward to getting this thing rolling,” the project’s new construction manager Austin Soder wrote to deputy chief building official Justin Hahn in early July, shortly after Crossland replaced PCL as the general contractor of record.
The company sent a detailed construction management plan and schedule to the city in August, with a roughly four-year building timeline, and ramped up work on the project this fall. The schedule — as with all of the correspondence with city officials and other documents cited in this reporting — were obtained from the city through a series of Colorado Open Records Act requests or located via city and county records available to the public online.
“They’re chomping at the bit to get to work there now allegedly,” Hahn wrote to a couple city engineering staffers on Aug. 5.
Muhigirwa told Aspen Journalism in mid-September, “Our understanding is that they plan to fully activate the site and start building the clubhouse next,” and said in a follow-up call Oct. 9 that city staffers are hopeful about the revival of construction activity. The club building, poised for significant renovations, will also include six fractional-ownership condos.
“We’re definitely seeing signs of work on the site,” Muhigirwa said Oct. 9 and confirmed via email Friday that there have been inspections on the club building for concrete slabs in the past few weeks.
“They have changed contractors and the applicant team and representatives from Crossland have assured the city that they are committed to restarting the project and seeing it through to completion with the new team,” Muhigirwa wrote.
16 years since initial approval
The Aspen Club spent recent years in a state that some community members, emailing city staff for status updates, have framed as “stagnant,” “dormant” and “abandoned” — hardly the vibrant community that the previous developers envisioned when they pitched timeshares to revitalize the club in the mid-2000s, with townhomes in place of the tennis courts and condos built into the clubhouse.
The concept would have to demonstrate a “great public benefit” to the city to secure approvals, the Aspen Daily News reported in 2010. The Aspen Club was already allowed to run its athletic facilities in a residential zone. But if developers wanted to add lodging, they would have to seek, in addition to other approvals, a Specially Planned Area (SPA) designation, which is used for projects that don’t align with existing zoning but carry the potential for community benefit, according to the Land Use Code in effect at the time. (A few years after the Aspen Club approval, the City Council repealed the SPA chapter from the code.)
Michael Fox, the face of the Aspen Club redevelopment project and part of its ownership group at the time, argued that the club’s continued existence was a big part of that benefit, as were “the jobs, hot beds and additional tax revenue the timeshare lodge would provide,” the Daily News reported. Sales of the timeshares would help the clubhouse pencil out and bankroll updates to its aging facilities. Affordable housing was also part of the plans.
Throughout a yearslong, contentious review process — the usual parking-traffic-hotel-in-neighborhood firestorm, fueled by angst over a local development boom — project representatives and city officials also negotiated additional benefits that became part of the 2010 approval ordinance.
Those conditions would include free office space for two nonprofits (continuing the club’s history of offering such facilities to local organizations), as well as millions of dollars invested in upgrades to the club’s facilities and commitments to maintain at least some community access to the club regardless of membership status.
A 0.25% assessment on each fractional-interest sale — valid for 25 years from the date of the approval — would support a new Community Health and Recreation Fund, meant to protect the ongoing benefits the facility provided by offering grants to fill the gaps if those benefits ceased to exist at the Aspen Club.
The ordinance also framed 12 two-bedroom units of onsite affordable housing as a voluntary commitment that went above and beyond the city’s requirements, accommodating 45% more full-time equivalent employees than developers were otherwise obligated to house based on jobs generated by the timeshares.
The units could be rented to Aspen Club employees or other workers in the community who qualified through the Aspen-Pitkin County Housing Authority. Although plans were modified for a different parking and condo configuration approved in 2015, the conditions for community benefits outlined in the 2010 ordinance still hold.
But delays in construction have postponed the delivery of the office space, facility upgrades, affordable housing and community access. Membership or not, no one can enter a club that doesn’t exist.
And because the timeshares are still under construction, no sales have closed that would collect an assessment for the Community Recreation Fund, which will sunset in 2035. Developers cannot close on any timeshare sales until those units receive a certificate of occupancy, Muhigirwa said. Based on the latest construction schedule, the fund could bank on about four years of collections — out of a 25-year lifetime for the assessment.
Construction crews made some headway on the project before the club closed in 2016, and they continued to make progress over the following year.
But tens of millions in previously committed financing never came through, and contractors walked off the job in 2017, citing debts unpaid. As described in later bankruptcy filings, construction ground to a halt, with the townhomes already 60% to 80% complete. Not much happened while developers navigated bankruptcy court — and they sought, but didn’t receive, a big-ticket loan to finish the project. The property sold through a foreclosure auction in early 2021, and AC Colorado Property Owner assumed ownership of the property from the successful bidder, GPIF Aspen Club, shortly thereafter.
A news release announcing the sale stated that Fireside, Revere Capital and Meriwether had partnered to buy the project, and in the months that followed, the leaders of Revere and Meriwether would tell local news organizations that they were looking forward to finishing the job.
“This is an exciting time for the Aspen Club and we are thrilled to partner with Revere Capital and Fireside Investments to acquire and complete the redevelopment of this legendary asset,” Meriwether’s Simon said in the news release. “We intend on restoring the Aspen Club to its former role as the center of social and athletic activity within the Aspen community. Our vision involves a focus on family, wellness and meaningful experiences.”
Over the course of nearly a year, Aspen Journalism tried to reach, via emails and phone calls, several representatives from Meriwether — including Simon and Rachel Maher, a third-party public relations representative — and sent sets of specific questions as well as general inquiries. They either declined to comment or did not respond.
Phone calls and emails to Revere Capital founder and principal Clark Briner and a general inbox for the company went unreturned. A LinkedIn message and attempts to email to Fireside founder and CEO Jonathan Langer also went unreturned.
Meriwether no longer lists the Aspen Club in its online portfolio, and it identifies four active projects on its website, all in California or Mexico.
The change of contractor paperwork filed this summer identifies David Swain as a point of contact for project ownership with an email address affiliated with Walton Enterprises, the private office for multiple generations of Walmart’s founding family, which according to Forbes magazine is the richest family in America.
Swain has worked on other Walton-affiliated projects in Arkansas, including the Walton Arts Center expansion in Fayetteville and the Walmart Arkansas Music Pavilion in Rogers, according to coverage by the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and the news website Talk Business and Politics.
Crossland, meanwhile, has helped build more than a half-dozen projects affiliated with different Walton interests in Arkansas — including an airplane hangar, the Alice Walton School of Medicine, the Walmart Museum, the Walmart Arkansas Music Pavilion, the Coler Mountain Bike Preserve and the Oz Trails Bike Park.
Swain declined to comment for this story. A marketing representative for Crossland declined to comment on any questions related to the Aspen Club, citing “contractual confidentiality obligations.”
Aspen Journalism has not been able to confirm the extent to which Meriwether, Revere Capital and Fireside remain involved in the Aspen Club today. It is also unclear the extent to which Swain is working on the Aspen Club through his capacity with Walton Enterprises, or whether or how Walton Enterprises is involved.
As described on its LinkedIn page, Walton Enterprises supports “the personal, philanthropic and business activity for multiple generations of [Walmart founder] Sam & Helen Walton’s family.” Several members of that family have property interests in the Roaring Fork Valley.
Aspen Journalism has attempted to reach members of several branches of the family through their business and philanthropic holdings to inquire about possible connections to the project. We heard back that neither Rob Walton — an Aspen homeowner, one Sam and Helen’s four children and a retired chairman of Walmart’s board of directors — nor Sam Walton, one of Rob’s children, are involved as individuals. Neither are the philanthropic Walton Family Foundation, Rob Walton Foundation or Carbondale-based Catena Foundation. (A grant from the Catena Foundation, founded by Sam Walton, funds Aspen Journalism’s water desk.) We have not heard back from several other members of the Walton family or their representatives we tried to reach.
Confidence and nerves
By way of AC Colorado Property Owner, project leaders initially seemed confident they could execute the project without much further delay, even with updates to the floor plans meant to align with contemporary trends toward high-end wellness and social clubs. After the acquisition, new developers retained Oz Architecture as their designers and PCL as the general contractor, both of which had worked on the Aspen Club under previous ownership. Architects from Oz spent about a year and a half working with developers to refine the plans, which they sent to the city in 2022.
The new concept would designate more space in the clubhouse for dining, socializing and rejuvenation relative to the area specifically marked for exercise, and would modify the townhomes to meet energy-efficiency and wellness-focused certifications.
Developers appeared to think that the vision wouldn’t deviate much from existing approvals, indicating that belief to local news organizations and city officials through project representatives.
“The approvals do not restrict the club from changing the fitness, training, personal health, or programming within the club. This includes changes to the types of offerings and square footages and internal layout of the club itself,” land use consultant Chris Bendon with the firm BendonAdams wrote to then city zoning administrator Bob Narracci in April 2022. “This allows the club to routinely update, upgrade, and improve upon the club offerings to stay ‘cutting-edge’ within the industry.”
“The overall form and function of the building has not changed,” Oz Architecture principal Rebecca Stone affirmed to Narracci six months later, “but updates have been made to meet the new ownership design intent.”
Still, adjustments to the clubhouse and townhome designs — requiring different change-order applications to update four different building permits — would involve months to years of city review, with multiple rounds of comments volleyed between project representatives and city staff. (There are five permits total: one for the clubhouse, one for the workforce housing and one for each of the three clusters of townhomes.)
Since the acquisition, crews have made headway on site work, infrastructure, a couple of model units in the townhomes, and various plumbing, electrical and mechanical jobs, according to inspection records and correspondence among city staff and project representatives.
Inspections are one of the city’s main metrics for progress on a site, and the records from those early years show that crews were moving forward: After some initial inspections and reinspections in the fall of 2021, there was a burst of activity between the late summer of 2022 and early spring of 2023. At some points, city records logged inspections every few days, almost entirely focused on the five townhomes closest to the Benedict Building next door, which were farthest along in construction when the property sold.
Meanwhile, city staff and a third-party contractor helping with permit reviews got started on the proposed changes to clubhouse and townhome designs, communicating with architects, land-use consultants and other hired project representatives as they sorted through the plans.
Developers submitted two change orders for townhomes 1-5, each of which were approved in one round of comments, according to answers Muhigirwa provided this spring. City permit records for one of those change orders show that the application was classified “simple,” and took about six months of review, from the date of the new application in August 2022 to the date that change order was issued in February 2023.
But the other three change orders — for the club building and additional sets of townhomes — were considered “major,” not simple. Those applications can involve 16 to 18 weeks for round-one review by the city and eight to 10 weeks per additional round, according to the city’s building-permit timelines.
The changes to townhomes 6-10 and 11-14 — submitted in applications in April 2023 — would ultimately take three rounds of review and would be issued in February 2025, according to the city’s permit records and answers provided by Muhigirwa via email.
Updates to the clubhouse would prompt five rounds of review, lasting more than three years from the submission date in February 2023 to the issuance of the updated permit in April of this year. That’s almost as long as the original clubhouse building permit took to approve, city permit data indicates. The timeline is “not unheard of for complex change orders,” according to another set of answers that Muhigirwa relayed via email, but it “is longer than most.” The clubhouse application spent significant time in both city and applicant hands.
Throughout this process, emails about the Aspen Club show bursts of confidence and periods of frustration. Project representatives checked in with the city; community development department leaders checked in with their staff; their staff checked in with the third-party reviewer helping out; and the city checked in with project representatives. The permits developers had active were already on different schedules, and those permits no longer reflected the work they wanted to do: If your floor plan is going to change, you don’t want to put up the walls too early.
As spring turned to summer again, the inspections started to taper off. By the end of 2023, an architect emailed a city staffer that owners were “getting a little nervous, moving forward with construction, until they have building permits in hand,” and the site shut down for more than half of 2024, a period during which so little happened for so long that developers had to seek an extension to keep existing permits from expiring.
The city granted that extension in part to allow change orders to “catch up,” and it has since treated incremental progress on any part of the project as sufficient to keep all permits active. (For instance, working on the townhomes keeps the clubhouse permit active, too.)
“Expiring a permit is a very punitive and final act,” Muhigirwa told Aspen Journalism in March. It can also affect the project’s vested rights and approvals, sometimes forcing developers to rework their plans to meet updates in city code. “So our philosophy has been that, whenever possible, we want to work with the developers — if they’re showing signs, communicating that they are intending to complete the project and can demonstrate why it is taking time. Obviously, that’s very subjective, but we try to give them the benefit of the doubt.”
Between the fall of 2025 and last spring, Muhigirwa and city community development director Ben Anderson told Aspen Journalism that they appreciated a renewed sense of energy from hired project representatives — such as a local land-use attorney, architects and a third-party owner’s representative — who seemed eager to complete the change-order review process and move forward with construction.
“I definitely am hopeful,” Muhigirwa told Aspen Journalism in March. “We have had a lot of correspondence from the applicant team, through their design team and owners representative, that they would like to restart the project in earnest this year. … It’s definitely in a different place than we were a year ago.”
But incremental progress will no longer suffice to keep the permits active.
“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. We’ve said that we’re not going to keep that going indefinitely,” Muhigirwa said in September. “This needs to be a real return to work on the site.”
What happens when — in 2,300 steps
Crossland representatives, through a construction-management plan and related documents submitted to the city this summer, have indicated that crews will complete the long-stalled Aspen Club project over the next four years, with individual phases completed between 2029 and 2030 and the final touches done around January 2031.
Their construction schedule contains more than 2,300 milestones, as specific as the dates they plan to install the countertops in a catering and prep kitchen; tile the shower of a workforce-housing unit; or apply the second coat of paint in an employee locker room.
It is a “living document” subject to adjustments, according to an Aug. 3 construction-management plan for the project, and it is used for planning and information purposes rather than a binding commitment to certain dates, Muhigirwa said.
Some of the earliest items on the schedule, slotted for this fall, include prep work on the clubhouse foundation, as well as rough plumbing, electrical and heating projects. On the townhomes, Crossland’s earliest work includes structural investigations and possible corrections, as well as various water and weatherproofing measures.
“Because of the duration that [the townhomes] have been left in their current state, my interpretation is that the new team wants to understand how everything is holding up and assess if any corrections are needed,” Muhigirwa said. Although some buildings look worn down from the outside — with weathered siding and fractured stone work, for instance — the city is generally not concerned about the state of the existing structures, she said.
Affordable-housing construction could begin later next year, according to the proposed schedule, but that depends on substantial progress on the clubhouse pool because of site logistics. (A plan for those logistics shows an access ramp to the clubhouse and some materials staging overlapping the workforce-housing parcel; the pool work will be completed “as soon as possible” to allow commencement of the affordable housing, according to the construction-management plan.)
The construction-management plan indicates that the three clusters of townhomes have a target for final inspections in the second quarter of 2029, the affordable housing in the fourth quarter of that year and the now-50-year-old clubhouse by the third quarter of 2030. Crossland plans to post public updates at the site.
Crossland identifies several representatives in the construction-management plan, including a superintendent, Braden Scott, listed as “the project liaison and sole point of contact for all public communication relative to the project,” according to the plan.
Aspen Journalism left messages for Scott, Soder and the general marketing department at Crossland. In response, a marketing representative declined to comment.
Erik Halverson, a real estate development professional based in Carbondale with his own company, Halvey Inc., continues to serve as an owner’s representative for the project, according to building-permit documents updated this past summer. He has worked in that role at least since 2025, city records show. Aspen Journalism left several emails and voicemails with Halverson between last December and this month but did not receive a response.
A local land-use attorney, Sarah Oates, is also one of the city’s points of contact for project representation, Muhigirwa told Aspen Journalism. In a September 2024 statement of authority filed with the Pitkin County Clerk and Recorder, Oates was named the sole member of Aspen Club Investments, the manager of Revere AC JV and the sole equity member of AC Colorado Property Owner. (Revere AC JV’s company number, identified in the database OpenCorporates, now directs on the Delaware Secretary of State Website to an entity named “Aspen Club Colorado.”)
Aspen Journalism sent Oates several emails and voicemails since April seeking comment but has not received a response.
‘Drop-dead’ deadline in sight
Muhigirwa described the latest permit extension, through Dec. 31, as a “drop-dead” deadline. Developers requested the extension in mid-March, just prior to the city’s issuance of the clubhouse change order, in anticipation that it would take more than the 180 days of inactivity allowed by International Building Code to prepare for a “comprehensive” scope of construction on that building.
The project team wanted “to ensure we can commence with the approved work when the team is ready,” Halverson wrote to Muhigirwa and Hahn, the deputy chief building official, on March 18. “In terms of timing, we are awaiting direction from ownership on next steps for the project. Once we are provided with that direction and have the opportunity to discuss that with the project team for clarification on timing, etc., we will provide updates to you.” The change to Crossland as general contractor occurred a few months later.
This final extension, through the end of 2026, is good only if “substantial work continues on the townhome buildings,” including reroofing, framing and flashing, the latter of which is sheet metal that helps keep water out, Muhigirwa wrote to project representatives in April. And “if the work on the club building permit has not recommenced by December 31, 2026, the permit will become invalid.”
Also, developers can’t buy more time by tweaking their plans again.
“Please be aware that new applications for revisions to land use approvals or permitted plans will be treated separately from the activity required to keep the permits valid,” Muhigirwa wrote. “Requesting amendments to land use approvals or submitting additional change orders will not constitute good cause for justifying additional extensions. Given the numerous extensions and lack of substantial activity on the site, it is unlikely that further extension requests will be granted.”
Muhigirwa acknowledged in September that Crossland has made its presence known on the property: “We’ll be encouraged by any activity that we see happening out there,” she told Aspen Journalism. “I’d say, regardless of where we feel about different projects, … we want something to get done once it’s permitted.”
In her eyes, the setup of workers and a site office do not, on their own, constitute a revitalization. But inspections are showing signs of progress, and she believes the Dec. 31 deadline is achievable.
“If it’s a gray area, we’ll have to make a determination on when is enough enough?” she said. “But I’m hoping that it’s not going to be in that gray area anymore — that it’s going to be obvious to everyone that they’re working and continuing the project.”
This story kicks off a series on the Aspen Club redevelopment that will continue in the coming weeks. Upcoming stories will explore the 40-year history of the Aspen Club as a health-and-fitness facility prior to its construction closure; the local context in which its redevelopment was proposed and approved; and the myriad factors that have impacted a decade-plus of construction fits and starts. Aspen Journalism data editor Laurine Lasalle contributed reporting to this series. Kaya Williams can be reached at kaya.noelle.williams@gmail.com.