A Trappist monastery in Old Snowmass went back on the market Monday — the same day that the property was slated to sell to an undisclosed buyer.
St. Benedict’s Monastery went under contract on March 13, nearly a year after the roughly 3,700-acre property was listed for $150 million by Ken and Haley Mirr of the Mirr Ranch Group in Denver and Michael Latousek of Douglas Elliman Aspen. The prospective closing date was Monday.
Latousek said on Tuesday that the buyer terminated the contract. He could not comment on the nature of the termination, just that the sellers are “moving forward” with the listing. It will remain at its original listing price of $150 million.
This was the first time the property had been under contract, though not the first time agents had met with an interested buyer. Another party looked at the monastery throughout the fall before pulling back, Latousek said in April.
Both the listing agents and monastic superiors were tight-lipped about the details of the offer and potential future use of the property under consideration this spring. The land is zoned RS-30 in Pitkin County, a designation that could allow over 100 dwelling units on the property — though it would require a yearslong, arduous land-use process.
They confirmed the prospective buyer was doing their “due diligence” and learning everything possible about the property but would not comment on the status of a review process required by the Catholic Church for sales of this magnitude.
That process, administered by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, considers factors such as a buyer’s reputation as well as their financial wherewithal; the dicastery does not comment on individual cases.
Meanwhile, advocates for preserving the monastery’s open spaces and spiritual legacy said they were hopeful about the prospective buyer’s intents for the property, even as they insisted they did not know who it was.
St. Benedict’s Monastery has operated for nearly 70 years in the Capitol Creek Valley. Monks first arrived from the “mother house” of St. Joseph’s Abbey in Massachusetts in 1956 and built a green-brick chapel and cloisters by hand. Those buildings opened in 1958 and were followed by additions like a contemporary retreat center in 1995 and an infirmary in 2000.
The property’s estimated 3,739 acres span grassy fields, shrubby hillsides and forest groves that have been stewarded by monks who care deeply for the natural world. Much of the agricultural land is now leased for cattle grazing; the property comes with enough water rights to irrigate as many as 1,500 acres.
It’s one of the largest contiguous properties in the region, sparsely developed and surrounded on several sides by conserved land. All told, 7,736 acres surrounding the monastery are protected through conservation easements and other land protection measures, the Aspen Daily News previously reported. Some of the conserved land abuts the monastery property, and much of it connects to land owned by the U.S. Forest Service.
However, the monastery itself has not been protected by a conservation easement, which sterilizes land from most development to preserve scenic and ecological values. It has been a target for conservation for decades, and was considered by some as good as conserved because of the monks’ stewardship, but past proposals never came to fruition. Monastic superiors decided to leave the decision of conservation up to an eventual buyer.
St. Benedict’s shuttered its retreat center and bookstore in 2023, an indication that the monastery would eventually close entirely as it faced a dwindling and aging population of monks. The decision to close came from higher-ups in the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance, which includes about 150 Trappist monasteries and nunneries around the world.
St. Joseph’s Abbot Vincent Rogers, who is the “father immediate” of St. Benedict’s, did not respond to a phone call or email for comment on Tuesday.
In the meantime, though, St. Benedict’s has continued to offer daily liturgical services. A handful of monks still live and work on the property, joined by dozens of regulars and visitors for Sunday Mass.
Even more churchgoers turn out for holidays like Easter, and they routinely vocalize their care for this community during the prayers of the faithful.
“For the monks of St. Benedict’s” is a common refrain.
This story was published in the June 11, 2025 edition of Aspen Daily News.