Anna Stonehouse/The Aspen Times
After a year of speculation about a new home or if they would close completely, the owner of Paradise Bakery said late Monday the iconic Aspen bakery will stay in its current location.
The bakery on the corner of Galena Street and Cooper Avenue in the Volk Plaza has been a downtown gathering place for locals, tourists and others since it opened there in 1981.
In May 2019, The Aspen Times first reported of the potential change after Patterson and his landlord, the Hecht family, could not come up with a new lease and that neighboring tenant Loro Piana, a high-end clothing company based in Italy, would expand into the bakery spot.
The lease was not set to expire until October 2021, Patterson told The Times last year.
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In a statement Monday, Patterson said the outpouring of support after the 2019 announcement led him and his older brother Danny to look for a new place.
But given the current pandemic and the economic crisis, moving locations became a question for all involved, Patterson said in a statement Monday night. He also said that some of the responses to the potential move “crossed the line to becoming negative and hurtful to our landlord and neighbors.”
Roughly 250,000 to 300,000 customers visit the bakery on an annual basis, Patterson said last year, adding the bakery pays about $250,000 in annual rent. Paradise has occupied roughly 1,600 square feet of the space in the Volk Plaza — 600 on the ground level and 1,000 below ground.
In the past year, Patterson said he was in talks with local developer Mark Hunt about moving into one of his properties in the downtown area that had outdoor seating.
But with Hunt’s help and working with the Hechts, Patterson said Monday they were grateful to be able to work out a deal to stay in the current location and will ride out the economic storm from the pandemic.
“With the uncertainty regarding the return of summer tourist business, we are moving forward cautiously,” he said in a statement. “It is our hop that the future recovery of the Aspen economy will allow us to realize this opportunity to remain on the Paradise corner for years to come.”