St. Benedict’s Monastery, a 3700-acre property in Old Snowmass, has sold for $120 million — Pitkin County’s priciest residential property sale to date.
The buyer is listed as Espen LLC, but the Wall Street Journal reported in December that the buyer is Palantir CEO Alex Karp. Palantir is a prominent software, data analysis and surveillance company.
The sale has drawn community attention because the land comes with a long history of conservation and a deep spiritual legacy, with many Roaring Fork Valley residents invested in its future.
Kaya Williams has been following the story for nearly two years. She broke the news of the sale on Dec. 16 for Aspen Daily News and Aspen Journalism.
She spoke with Aspen Public Radio’s Halle Zander about the sale and possible next steps.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Halle Zander: Have you learned anything more about what Karp might want to do with this property?
Kaya Williams: Well, as the Wall Street Journal reported, the most likely use at this point is going to be a private residence, and it's going to be more like a secluded — somebody's house — not a dense monastery suburb. That's basically out of the question based on current land use rules.
Some stuff that someone might want to build, such as converting an existing religious facility into a residential use, or creating new residences, it's probably going to require some approval from Pitkin County at various levels of oversight. Some of it can go all the way up to the Pitkin County commissioners, but it's pretty limited at this point as far as development goes, and so it's most likely not a lot of impact on the land based on what we know at this point.
I will say, also, that Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir — one thing that we know for certain is that he loves solitude. He likes going cross-country skiing and values privacy. Those sorts of ideas suggest that he's not going to go in there and develop it and flip it.
Zander: Right. I mean, are you hearing any concerns about Karp being the buyer, given the fact that his company has lots of contracts with the Department of Defense and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — concerns that his company threatens data privacy. I'm just curious if you've been hearing feedback from some of your sources or community members since that news broke that they're worried about Karp coming to the Roaring Fork Valley.
Williams: The people that I've talked to, just in the realm of conservation of the land, say, “Hey, maybe this is hopeful. Maybe, you know, we could see this open space preserved as open space, either through an easement or just through the fact that he might not want to touch that much of it.”
As far as his business dealings go, and his complicated reputation I think would be a generous way of describing it, there's more digging that I need to do.
An interesting thing about this property that many other properties in our valley are not subject to is approval from the Vatican, and they said, “We don't comment on individual cases, but here's a set of guidelines on what we consider when we're reviewing somebody.” The Vatican is not just looking at whether someone has the capacity to pay the mortgage or buy the property, but they also look at things like reputation.
I'm very curious to find out what that evaluative process was, and whether his business dealings and affiliations were taken into account. We're not really going to know unless somebody from Rome calls me back.
Zander: Okay. Now, there have been attempts to put conservation easements on this property in the past. Why have those not come to fruition?
Williams: This conservation conversation has been going on for a very long time. Sometimes they just got caught up. You know, there's a lot you have to do to put a conservation easement on a piece of land, even if you're really excited about it. But by the fall of 2022, the general chapter that oversees all these Trappist monasteries had voted to close St. Benedict's and had decided that when we sell this, let's leave the decision of conservation up to an eventual buyer.
Zander: So it's hard to know why a decision like that was made.
Williams: I don't have a direct source saying, “Hey, we did it specifically because of this.” One thing that I did pick up when I talked to one of the listing agents, Ken Mirr, he's with the Mirr Ranch group in Denver, he spoke of this idea of “donative intent.”
If a buyer wants to buy the property and then donate the conservation easement, if you attach an easement to the contingency of the sale, that takes away their donative intent and whatever benefits they might get from donating a conservation easement.
Zander: Like tax incentives.
Williams: Tax incentives, exactly, versus being perhaps required to conserve it because it's already baked in.
Zander: So what are we looking for next? What's the next big milestone in this process?
Williams: I think the next big milestone is going to be whatever sorts of land use approvals the new owner — that being Alex Karp and Espen LLC and what have you — is going to go through with Pitkin County and some of that, as I said, you know, there are certain things that you can do at certain levels of review, and some things are going to run all the way up the chain to county commissioners.
Zander: So we'll be watching agendas.
Williams: We will be watching agendas. That is one of my hobbies these days.
Zander: Okay, Kaya, thank you so much for coming in.
Williams: Thanks so much, Halle. Appreciate it.
