A New Chapter for Aspen's Forgotten Slope: Chalet Alpina Breaks Ground at Historic Lift One

For nearly eight decades, the western base of Aspen Mountain has sat in a kind of suspended animation — a quiet stretch of South Aspen Street overshadowed by the bustle of Gondola Plaza a few blocks away, yet holding a claim to being the birthplace of lift-served skiing in America. That chapter is now closing. Chalet Alpina, a long-delayed, $350 million redevelopment anchored at the base of the original Lift One, has officially broken ground, setting in motion what city officials have called one of the most complex construction projects in Aspen's history.

Ground Finally Breaks

Chalet Alpina — formerly known as Lift One Lodge — has begun construction at Aspen Mountain's historic Lift One base, marking the start of a years-long build that will bring timeshares, residences, restaurants, retail and other amenities to the site. The project's developers, Irongate Group and Aspen-based HayMax Capital, first acquired the land in 2015 and spent years coordinating with the city of Aspen and the Aspen Skiing Company on a master plan before Aspen voters narrowly approved the project in 2019 — passing by a margin of just 26 votes, 1,555 in favor to 1,529 against.

"This groundbreaking represents more than two decades of vision, persistence and collaboration, beginning with those who helped shape Lift One before us," HayMax Capital co-founder Michael Brown said in a release announcing the milestone. "When we became involved, I believed there had to be a way to bring the lift back down the mountain and reconnect it with town... We believe Chalet Alpina and the broader Lift One neighborhood will add something truly special to Aspen Mountain while honoring its history and bringing renewed energy to this important part of town."

Initial site work began in September 2025 with a new water main and grading at the top of South Aspen Street, precursors to a new cul-de-sac that will anchor that end of the corridor. With vertical construction now underway, the developers anticipate completion in 2030 — a timeline that has shifted slightly over the life of the project, with earlier projections pointing to 2029.

Reviving Skiing's American Birthplace

The site carries outsized historical weight. Aspen Mountain's original Lift One opened on January 11, 1947 — a two-stage, single-chair lift that was, at the time, the longest and fastest chairlift in the world, running roughly 8,400 feet in length with a 2,200-foot vertical rise. Built by ski pioneer Friedl Pfeifer and the newly formed Aspen Skiing Company, its opening drew roughly 2,000 spectators to a town of only 800 residents and marked the beginning of top-to-bottom, lift-served skiing on the mountain. Three years later, in 1950, the lift hosted the first FIS World Alpine Championships ever held outside Europe — the first major international ski competition on American soil.

The lift that most recently served the area, known as Lift 1A or the Shadow Mountain Lift, was a later-generation replacement positioned about three blocks uphill from the original terminus. Its removal began in July, and although the redevelopment's new lift — set to load roughly 500 feet closer to downtown at Dean Street — will replace it, the original 1947 base terminal and several vintage lift towers are being preserved rather than demolished. Under the approved master plan, the historic Skiers Chalet buildings on the site are being relocated and restored, with one destined to house a restaurant and another repurposed, in partnership with the Aspen Historical Society, as a ski museum showcasing artifacts from the sport's earliest days in North America.

What's Being Built

Spanning roughly two-and-a-half city blocks and about 200,000 square feet, Chalet Alpina is being designed around what its developers describe as a European alpine aesthetic intended to echo the character of Aspen's original ski chalets. The finished development is expected to include a mix of fractional and whole-ownership residences — branded Resort Residences and Mountain Homes, respectively — along with a five-star hospitality component and a private members' club offering ski-in, ski-out access at the base of the new lift. Reported pricing has placed shared-ownership residences starting under $3 million, with full-ownership Mountain Homes beginning in the mid-$30 million range.

Jason Grosfeld, chairman and CEO of Irongate Group, has framed the project as an attempt to balance ambition with restraint given the site's history. "This project sits on storied ground, and we felt a responsibility to honor that history while bringing a fresh and elevated perspective," he has said of the development, adding that its architecture and social spaces are meant to "rekindle the warmth and energy that made this slope a gathering place for generations."

Chalet Alpina is rising alongside a second, related project in the same corridor: a luxury hotel now expected to be developed by the Aman Group on what was previously proposed as the Gorsuch Haus. Aspen Skiing Company, meanwhile, is responsible for engineering the new lift itself, which is widely expected to take the form of a gondola or chondola once both adjacent building projects reach a stage of construction that allows the lift alignment to be finalized. Because the new lift also depends on a below-grade parking garage, skiers are expected to face at least one or two seasons without lift access to the lower west side of Aspen Mountain while construction continues.

A Complicated Legacy

Not everyone has embraced the project without reservation. During the 2019 ballot campaign, The Aspen Times editorial board urged a "no" vote, arguing that the combined employee-housing commitments from Chalet Alpina and the adjacent hotel project fell well short of what the developments' projected workforces would actually need, leaving a shortfall the board estimated at close to 100 jobs' worth of housing. Under their current approvals, the developers are required to mitigate for a combined roughly 61 full-time-equivalent employees — Chalet Alpina alone accounts for about 39.5 — a lower bar than might typically be expected for projects of this scale, achieved in part through a now-discontinued provision in the city's land-use code that reduced housing mitigation in exchange for higher-density lodging.

City officials have also been candid about the scale of the undertaking itself. Aspen's Community Development department has described the coordination required between Chalet Alpina, the adjacent Aman hotel project, Aspen Skiing Company's lift replacement and the city's own infrastructure work as among the most complex builds the city has ever managed, given how tightly the projects, the historic structures and the new lift alignment are threaded together on a relatively small footprint.

Still, for a site that has functioned for years as little more than an overlooked parking lot and volleyball court beside a rusting steel gantry, groundbreaking marks a symbolic turning point. Nearly 80 years after Friedl Pfeifer's chairlift first carried skiers up Aspen Mountain and helped launch an American ski industry, the forgotten side of the mountain is, once again, becoming a gathering place.