The Aspen Club will have to back up its promise with cash that the building will remain an athletic facility available to the local community in a new scheme put forward by City Council in the ongoing debate about building timeshares on the club’s property.
 
Aspen Mayor Mick Ireland said the approval ordinance, as written before Monday, provided no penalty to a future owner of the club if that owner decided to close the club down.
 
“There’s a potential for a great public benefit here, but our job is to make sure we aren’t taken advantage of,” Ireland said.
 
Aspen Club Managing Partner Michael Fox has stated that keeping and enhancing the club as a fixture in town is one of the community benefits of the application. To guarantee this, council members agreed that the club should be required to set aside money equal to the amount that would be needed to open a new athletic club. Fox was given until next week to figure out what that amount would be.
 
Council continued the hearing on the club’s proposal to build 20 timeshare condos, 12 affordable housing units and a 50-space underground parking garage until a special meeting that will be held on Tuesday, June 1, at 2 p.m.
 
Monday’s three-hour public hearing on the Aspen Club became a back and forth between council and Fox about how to best guarantee the public benefit that the development is required to provide. At one point Ireland suggested that the club could become a member-owned co-op in a model akin to the Green Bay Packers football team.
 
Fox has already committed to making sure 50 percent of club members are local residents and to remain the managing partner of the Aspen Club corporation until the project is completed. He seemed frustrated with what he called “the moving goal line.”
 
“It’s tough to try and spell out every single eventuality of this thing,” Fox said.
 
Councilman Dwayne Romero summed up the council’s desire for the project.
 
“Once it’s all done, you’ll keep the door open for forever and a day,” he said.

curtis@aspendailynews.com