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Retail building sells for $15 million

Rick CarrollAspen, CO Colorado

ASPEN Nearly one year after a commercial building across from Clark’s Market sold for $10 million, the owners have flipped it for a $5 million profit.Aspen businessmen John Provine and Ronald Soderling sold the two-level, 20,000-square-foot structure this week for $15 million to a collection of seven limited liability companies, according to documents at the Pitkin County Clerk & Recorder’s Office. “I made a little money on it,” Provine said Friday.The transaction was the final part of a two-pronged deal for the Mill Street Commercial Center. In March the same seven LLCs combined to buy the 8,000-square-foot back building, which houses an architectural firm and a tanning salon, among other businesses, for $3.8 million.Less clear is what the new owners have in mind for the future of the retail complex, which also includes the likes of a coin-operated Laundromat, a bike shop and a video store. The building is zoned Service-Commercial-Industrial.Among the building’s new owners are Aspen attorneys Ron Garfield and Andrew Hecht, who have been on a buying spree of sorts over the years, acquiring such downtown locations as the former spaces for The Red Onion and Aspen Drug. Garfield was out of town and Hecht did not return a telephone message Friday.Records show other investors include Timothy Presutti, Douglas Ostrover, Nikos Hecht, Mill Street Capital Partners, Korenvaes Capital Partners of Dallas, and the Hecht Children’s Trust. Provine said he is not sure what the new owners will do, but doubts they’ll inherit his vision for the Mill Street Commercial Center – which was to raze it and model it after the Obermeyer Project around the corner on Bleeker Street. In the Obermeyer project, the developer tore down dilapidated buildings, which housed nearly 20 business, to make way for the existing structures to host a combination of residence and commercial operations. Tenants were relocated during the Obermeyer construction project. Provine said City Hall’s tightened regulations don’t make anything easy for would-be developers. That’s part of the reason he abandoned moving forward with his development plans. “Under the current environment I can’t see anybody going forward in a fast manner,” he said. “But they [the new owners] have got patient money and I think they’ll go ahead and sit on it for a while. I’d be 110 [years old] before I get anything done with it, and I just want to golf and ski.”Rick Carroll can be reached at rcarroll@aspentimes.com.