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Aspen council signals support to pursue land-use code changes on membership clubs; keeps day-pass practice as interim
Summary
After a staff briefing, council agreed by majority to direct staff to pursue a land-use code update to define membership-based clubs and provide clearer rules, while maintaining the current day-pass/open-to-public interpretation in the short term pending code work.
City staff led a short Dec. 16 discussion on membership-based clubs in Aspen’s commercial core, responding to a growing number of inquiries about private or membership-only concepts. Ben Anderson, the city’s Community Development Director, told the council the city has been applying an interpretation of the land-use requirement "open to the general public" by asking membership-based concepts to offer a day-pass as a way to provide public access.
Council members debated whether a day-pass requirement is sufficient. One member used a rhetorical example — a $1,000,000 day pass — to illustrate that a nominal day-pass could be gamed without price or transparency limits. Several council members said they worry about privatization of downtown space and the possibility that too much commercial space could become effectively off-limits to ordinary residents over time. "We're getting more requests for these types of uses... the crux of the matter is in our use categories," Ben Anderson told the council.
A majority signaled support for option 2 — directing staff to draft a land-use code change that would create a defined use category for membership-based clubs, with explicit allowances and limits. Staff said they would not undertake aggressive enforcement of existing nonconforming clubs while code changes are developed and that historically established clubs would likely be treated differently in any enforcement approach.
