I haven\u2019t been around Aspen much for the last 30 years, but I do try to keep up. I don\u2019t recall a more blatant example of raw, unvarnished personal greed destroying such an important piece of Aspen\u2019s community fabric than the Hecht\u2019s decision not to renew Paradise Bakery\u2019s lease.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also just bad business. As a commercial real estate developer myself, I cannot fathom any reason, given identical rental income, why a landlord would choose a low-traffic-generating business like Loro Piana over a traffic-generating iconic gold mine like the Paradise Bakery. You develop around invaluable assets like that, not destroy them or run them off to a competing developer only blocks away.<\/p>\n
Additionally, given the Paradise\u2019s track-record and franchised growth, I would think they would be considered a low-risk \u201ccredit tenant.\u201d I don\u2019t know much about Loro Piana, but we all know businesses like that come and go like leaves in the Aspen wind. As a landlord, business like that are a huge financial risk. Minimizing financial risk is the paramount objective of commercial real estate development.<\/p>\n
Given so many inexplicable decisions, I can only conclude that the Hechts don\u2019t know what they\u2019re doing, which seems unlikely, or something about this deal is not on the up and up. If the Hechts have something else up their Trojan sleeves, I believe the community has a right to know what that is.<\/p>\n
Todd Stone<\/p>\n
Salt Lake City<\/p>\n