Straight Up Snowmass: Best of both worlds

He hasn’t lived here that long, but Phil Sirianni has been coming to Snowmass since he was 14.

A lifelong resident of California, Sirianni and his wife, Karen, decided to relocate to the village four and a half years ago. He moved his commercial real-estate business to an office in Aspen, built a home on Stellar Lane and made a dream of living in Colorado a reality.

“Living out here is great,” Sirianni said.

Sirianni started working for his dad at 13. The family-owned company has evolved into the business he now runs from here, Rossmore Enterprises, which owns real estate across the country including in Colorado but mostly in Texas and California.

After growing up in the Los Angeles area, Sirianni went to the University of Southern California, when he met Karen on a ski trip to Mammoth. They married in 1985 and have three daughters, who they moved to Orange County when they were young.

But after working in the business for this long, Sirianni decided he could do it from anywhere. Business — and USC football games — take him away maybe once a month or so, but the Siriannis are loving life in Snowmass.

They ski most weekends, and he’s found an outlet for another favorite hobby — cycling. He mountain bikes, rides to work three times a week in the summer and races with Aspen Cycling Club.

“It’s just a fun thing to do,” he said of the club, which has races every Wednesday night in different places in the valley.

In addition to pursuing his passions for skiing and cycling, Sirianni is also the president of Snowmass Rotary. He was a member of a chapter briefly while a young businessman in Los Angeles, but said the club was too big for him to really feel involved. But Rotary is a great organization, and he’s proud of the support the Snowmass club has provided to charities.

“I’ve met a lot of people I would have never met,” he added.

Straight Up Snowmass is a series profiling people who live and work in Snowmass Village.