Another prominent Aspen building has changed hands, and the new owner is becoming an increasingly familiar name on the downtown commercial scene.
The owners of Johnny McGuire’s sandwich shop and the Domino’s pizza franchise sold the building housing their businesses earlier this month for $1.5 million. The buyer, 730 E. Cooper LLC, is an entity controlled by Chicago and Aspen businessman Mark Hunt, the lead investor in the Gap and Bidwell buildings and an investor in the Hotel Jerome.
The deal for the building, which does not include the land it sits on but does include the rights to take over the ground lease, also gives some level of security to Johnny McGuire’s and Domino’s in the near future, according to those involved in the deal.
The two longtime local-serving businesses will be given the opportunity to go into any new building that is developed on the site at the corner of Cooper and Original, according to listing broker Josh Landis of Aspen Real Estate Company. And if they don’t go in, business owners Terrence McGuire and Mark Campisi will be “generously compensated,” added Landis.
“The buyer was very sensitive to the tenants,” he said.
Realtor Lorrie Winnerman, who represented the buyer in the transaction, confirmed on behalf of her client that the sellers will be able to remain tenants. The new owner, whom she declined to identify, “is keeping the building as is with no plans in the immediate future,” Winnerman added.
In addition to the two affordable eateries, the nearly 7,000-square-foot building across from City Market includes three other retail tenants—Sammy the Barber, Tulips body waxing studio, and Aspen L.E.A.F. medical marijuana dispensary—as well as three affordable apartments on the second floor.
It was being marketed as a redevelopment opportunity—complete with a set of architectural plans that had been floated during a failed redevelopment effort in the mid-2000s.
The building, officially listed for sale in January 2012, attracted at least two potential buyers and was able to command a price slightly higher than its listing price of $1.49 million due to the competition, said Landis.
But it’s an unusual deal because the land is owned separately, by the Kelly family which once had an auto parts store in the building. The building owner is subject to a 100-year lease with the landowners.
Public county records related to the March 5 transaction actually show a sale price of $445,800 for the building—which reflects the amount paid for the actual improvements (and is equal to the county assessor’s value of the building), explained Curt Sanders, the attorney representing the buyer. The rest of the actual $1.5 million sale price includes what was paid to take over the ground lease of the building, which includes becoming the landlord of the building and the rights to redevelop the building subject to the terms of the ground lease, said Sanders.
There was also a mistake made in the deed for the sale, showing the buyer as 730 E. Durant LLC, when in fact the buyer is 730 E. Cooper LLC, said Sanders, who added that the mistake is in the process of being corrected.
A document filed by 730 E. Cooper LLC identifies Mark Hunt as the manager of the LLC, and gives the same mailing address as Hunt’s Chicago-based real estate development company, M Development.
A venture controlled by Hunt in December sold a building on Chicago’s Gold Coast for $12.35 million, according to the online Chicago Real Estate Daily.
Hunt, through various LLCs, has been on a bit of a buying spree in Aspen lately. His 434 East Cooper Avenue LLC bought the Mountain Plaza, or Bidwell, Building on the corner of Galena and Cooper for $22 million in December. Conceptual approval to redevelop the building was given that same month.
One of his ventures acquired the one-story Gap building in October for $13.25 million, and is redeveloping it into a two-story building with five street-level luxury retail tenants and a second-story restaurant.
And Hunt is one of three investors in Jerome Ventures LLC, which acquired the Hotel Jerome in December 2009 after a deal in lieu of foreclosure made with the previous owners.
The background of the Buckhorn Arms building is also interesting. McGuire and Campisi bought it from their landlord, the Kelly family, in 2000 as part of a compromise plan to save their businesses, according to McGuire. At the time there was high interest in the property and a good chance it could be redeveloped to make way for a higher-end property, but the deal allowed the partners to control their destinies at an affordable price.
The ramshackle building, built in 1952 and the longtime home of the Buckhorn Lodge, was jokingly named after the Sanford Arms rooming house on the TV sitcom Sanford and Son.
McGuire and Campisi tried to redevelop the building themselves in the mid-2000s, with an eye toward keeping their retail operations on the ground floor, but first ran into bureaucratic issues and then the Great Recession.
“We’re lucky we didn’t start the process one year earlier,” McGuire said in February, “or we could have been left with a hole in the ground.”
Eventually the cost and hassle of being landlords in addition to running their businesses became a toll on McGuire and Campisi, which is when they decided to sell it.
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