Brad Carner, who owned Gracy’s consignment shop with his wife Karen until it went out of business last year, died yesterday by hanging himself on the couple’s property in Woody Creek. He was 60 years old.
Basalt fire personnel and Pitkin County sheriff’s deputies responded to an emergency call at the Carners’ home on Lower River Road at 3:05 p.m. According to Ron Ryan, investigations director for the sheriff’s office, Karen had found Brad in a rental unit on their property, and by the time authorities arrived, he had been cut down. Resuscitation efforts were unsuccessful.
The coroner and the sheriff’s office conducted an investigation, and “everything we learned from the scene was consistent with hanging,” said Ryan.
Carner, who was originally from Indiana, was a commercial real estate broker in Seattle and Denver before moving to Aspen about seven years ago with Karen. The couple were married 15 years. Carner had three grown children with his first wife.
Close family friend Todd Shaver said Carner was the top-producing sales rep for Coldwell Banker in Denver for five years. He was also a specialist in fractional ownership, and worked on initially launching the Highlands Ritz-Carlton fractional project.
“He had a million best friends and I’m one of them,” said Shaver, who recalled a trip to Alaska with several friends to celebrate Carner’s 60th birthday last year. Carner loved adventure, he said, and it was fitting that he spent his birthday sea kayaking and camping.
“He was one of most unique individuals that all of us have ever met, just a fun-loving person,” said Shaver. “We were really privileged to have him in our lives all these years.”
Gracy’s was Aspen’s longest-running consignment shop (more than 30 years), but although it was a popular institution, it wasn’t without its share of troubles. It moved at least twice since the Carners owned it, once after a bitter dispute with the landlord over rent.
The store most recently operated next to the now-shuttered Crystal Palace, where it again appeared to be in a precarious position when it became known that building owner Mead Metcalf was seeking to sell the property last year.
In the fall of 2006, the Carners opened a Gracy’s at Glenwood Meadows, but that venture lasted only a few months.
Then, last summer, Gracy’s in Aspen was seized by the state for nonpayment of taxes. It reopened a short time later after the Carners paid their debts, but the couple’s financial troubles had caught up with them. That compounded with the impending sale of the Crystal Palace led them to announce they were shutting down Gracy’s for good last fall.
“Since Gracy’s closed it’s been tough on him,” said Shaver, who added that Carner hasn’t been working and Karen had taken a service job at the Little Nell Hotel that she was “way overqualified for. They haven’t been at the top of their game financially for a while.”
lutz@aspendailynews.com