Three major cultural nonprofits are teaming up on a proposal to build deed-restricted housing at their sprawling Aspen Meadows campus, according to an announcement released Thursday.
Each organization — the Aspen Institute, the Aspen Music Festival and School, and the Aspen Center for Physics — has identified locations for their own buildings onsite, built with funding they’ve dedicated to the purpose of housing issues. According to a website for the project, the partnership allows them to develop a cohesive vision for the project, address potential impacts and infrastructure needs, and eliminate redundancies in the land use application process.
They’re calling the concept “Housing the Aspen Idea,” a nod to Walter and Elizabeth Paepcke’s vision for intellectual, physical and spiritual enrichment that shaped modern Aspen and the environment of the Aspen Meadows campus.
“In exploring solutions, it was natural to reach out to our cultural partners at the Aspen Institute and the Aspen Center for Physics,” music festival president and CEO Alan Fletcher said in a press release. “After all, the very essence of the Aspen Idea is that inspiration happens in a construct of wholeness and balance.”
“In evaluating the needs for all three institutions, we found commonality of challenge but also commonality of purpose,” Fletcher said. “Our institutions share a deep commitment to art, ideas, and knowledge, and also a deep commitment to this community.”
Cultural nonprofits like the music festival and school have struggled for years to find enough affordable housing for people in their Aspen programs.
The festival offers some dorm-style accommodations in complexes like Marolt Ranch and Burlingame Ranch, as well as incentives for landlords who rent at below-market rates to students. But the number of musicians, faculty and staff outnumber the available beds — and, left to Aspen’s competitive free market, they’ve felt the ever-tighter squeeze of high prices and short supply. (In 2022, the festival had to cut student enrollment and cancel its Philharmonic Orchestra due to housing woes.)
“It is a simple truth that free-market housing at a price we can afford is disappearing, and to continue to create and present music here as we do, there is a call we must answer,” Fletcher said in a press release.
The organization’s neighbors have felt the pinch too: The Aspen Center for Physics board chair, Dr. Hirosi Ooguri, described the housing problem as an “existential crisis” for the intellectual hub; the Aspen Institute’s Dan Porterfield said that the nonprofit “must find long term housing solutions” to ensure its longevity.
Leaders of the Physics Center and the Institute described this partnership as a critical and constructive way to preserve the academic and cultural activities at the Aspen Meadows Campus.
“Our partnership with the Aspen Institute and Aspen Music Festival and School is essential to preserve and enhance the academic environment of the Meadows area and to strengthen our cultural activities for decades to come,” Ooguri said.
A project page for “Housing the Aspen Idea” pinpoints housing locations that are adjacent to existing buildings and infrastructure, with goals to “preserve open space” and “tie into the fabric of the neighborhood.”
In the press release, Porterfield said, “it is critical that the designs put forward are responsive to the distinctive character of Aspen and our architectural legacy, adhere to the highest sustainability standards, and are developed with the input of the community that makes Aspen such a special place.”
Each organization has selected its own architectural teams, with some overlap: The music festival is working with Harry Teague Architects and 2757 Design. The physics center is also working with Harry Teague Architects, while the Aspen Institute has chosen the firm Rowland and Broughton. Design Workshop is leading the planning process for all three nonprofits.
(Harry Teague also designed the Harris Concert Hall and the recently renamed Klein Music Tent at Aspen Meadows, as well as the music festival’s Bucksbaum campus that doubles as the Aspen Country Day School; Roland + Broughton contributed to the Resnick Center for Herbert Bayer Studies that is affiliated with the Aspen Institute.)
The music festival, physics center and Aspen Institute are still in the planning process, and are currently working on their land use application to the city of Aspen. The Aspen Meadows Campus is a “planned development” in city parlance (formerly known as a “specially planned area”), and the nonprofits are pursuing an amendment to the plan for their housing concepts.
Planned developments require approval from Aspen’s city council, and involve community input. Two open houses are planned on June 12 at Harris Hall and July 16 at the music festival’s “Entertainment Tent.”
