{"id":2449908,"date":"2019-10-15T21:52:01","date_gmt":"2019-10-16T03:52:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/aspen-mountain-lodge-fight-over-hoa-board-money-goes-to-district-court\/"},"modified":"2019-10-16T08:11:21","modified_gmt":"2019-10-16T14:11:21","slug":"aspen-mountain-lodge-fight-over-hoa-board-money-goes-to-district-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/aspen-mountain-lodge-fight-over-hoa-board-money-goes-to-district-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Aspen Mountain Lodge fight over HOA board, money goes to district court"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
on Friday, October 11, 2019. (Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times)<\/strong>
Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

A dispute at Aspen Mountain Lodge has spawned dueling court actions regarding who has control of its funds and homeowners\u2019 association.<\/p>\n

On one side are developers and brothers Aaron and Michael Brown and their business associate Harris Berlinsky, who are behind three limited liability companies that own 20 of the lodge\u2019s 38 units.<\/p>\n

On the other side are unit owners William Sheehan Jr., Scott Sinta and Twin Coasts Limited, an entity controlled by Josh Nordan.<\/p>\n

Both sides introduced court documents last week in the aftermath of Alpine Bank\u2019s decision to freeze the accounts<\/a> that had been managed, until the last half of September, by The Aspen Homeowners\u2019 Association, which is run by the lodge\u2019s unit owners. Alpine Bank filed what is called a \u201ccomplaint in interpleader\u201d \u2014 which has been pending before Pitkin County District Court since Sept. 19 \u2014 seeking a judge\u2019s clarification on whom should be able to access the operation\u2019s money.<\/p>\n

Bob Morris, who manages Aspen Mountain Lodge, once had access to its funds but he no longer does because the accounts were frozen.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis system in the long run is not workable,\u201d he said, but added business for October is up and last weekend the lodge was sold out. But, he said, two checks covering the lodge\u2019s sales tax payments have bounced to the city, and other vendors have cut ties until the mess is resolved.<\/p>\n

In a statement last month, the Browns said: \u201cWe are seriously concerned about the lack of appropriate reserves to cover normal building maintenance and upkeep needs and strongly believe that the association must follow sound financial principals and state laws to assure sufficient money to fund the reserves. We are deeply sorry that the staff has been impacted by this association dispute and are working hard to address it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morris countered Tuesday that the Browns want to \u201ctake over\u201d the lodge.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Aspen ideal is mind, body, spirit, but the Aspen ideal for them is to simply to line their pocketbooks,\u201d he said. \u201cThey view Aspen as their own cash register.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Browns believe they should have control of the lodge\u2019s HOA board\u2019s top two seats \u2014 president and vice president \u2014 and its account funds.<\/p>\n

On Friday, the three LLCs filed a legal petition, not made public until Tuesday, seeking a Pitkin County District Court judge\u2019s court-ordered special meeting of the HOA.<\/p>\n

They want a court-approved HOA meeting because they have been unable to get the statutorily required unit owners\u2019 attendance, known as a quorum, to hold one themselves, their petition contends.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is imperative that the Court intervene and fashion a process whereby the association can do business and affirm who is in charge of the association,\u201d says the 18-page petition, which was filed by attorney Maria Morrow of the Aspen firm Oates, Knezevich, Gardenswartz, Kelly & Morrow PC. \u201cThe governance disputes have caused serious disruption in the business of the association.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also on Friday, Sheehan, Sinta and Twin Coasts Limited filed a set of claims in district court against The Aspen Homeowners Association and the Brown brothers, accusing them of rigging a board election to their favor because they collectively own 52.6% of the lodge\u2019s units.<\/p>\n

As manager of Mountain Lodge Holdings LLC, which owns 20 units, Michael Brown ran for president of the HOA at its May 31 meeting. He prevailed because he voted for himself on behalf of Mountain Lodge Holding\u2019s ownership interest, and he also did the same by electing Aaron to vice president, alleged the filing, which was made by Lucas Van Arsdale of Balcomb & Green PC. Sheehan retained his seat as secretary-treasurer in that election.<\/p>\n

The filing by Sheehan, Sinta and Twin Coasts Limited contends that Mountain House Lodging did not have the right to elect both Brown brothers to board seats in the same election.<\/p>\n

To get around that, on June 20 the Brown brothers created two LLCs \u2014 one under Aaron Brown\u2019s name, the other under Berlinksy\u2019s \u2014 which were both deeded a condo unit from Mountain Lodge Holding, the filing contends.<\/p>\n

The Browns and Berlinsky subsequently called for a special meeting, to be held July 23, to validate the May 31 election results and remove Sheehan from his post. Sheehan, however, refused to resign, while no business was conducted because of a lack of quorum.<\/p>\n

The Browns tried to hold four more HOA meetings, but none of them drew enough attendance to establish a quorum.<\/p>\n

Last week\u2019s filing by the Browns cast blame on the HOA.<\/p>\n

\u201cMembers of the Association are determined to shut down the business of the association,\u201d the filing says. \u201cMembers have demonstrated their determination by refusing to attend meetings of the members on multiple dates, confirming in writing that refusal is a strategy to shut down business, communicating that they will not attend a meeting \u2018ever\u2019; and demanding that the board stop calling meetings altogether.\u201d<\/p>\n

The filing seeks the court\u2019s approval for a special meeting, with no quorum, to be held Oct. 30.<\/p>\n

The other three unit owners are seeking a declaratory judgment from the court to determine that the May board election results were invalid and put Sheehan, Sinta and Nordan (Twin Coasts Ltd) back on the board.<\/p>\n

rcarroll@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

on Friday, October 11, 2019. (Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times)Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times A dispute at Aspen Mountain Lodge has spawned dueling court actions regarding who has control of its funds and homeowners\u2019 association. On one side are developers and brothers Aaron and Michael Brown and their business associate Harris Berlinsky, who are behind three limited […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2449908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-19 14:34:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2449908"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2449938,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449908\/revisions\/2449938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2449908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2449908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2449908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}