315 E. Hyman Is Testing Whether Downtown Aspen Still Has Room for Locals
October 29, 2026
October 29, 2026
A 220-seat restaurant and lounge called Guest House is preparing to open on New Year's Eve at 415 E. Hyman Ave., in the former Madame Ushi space. Its Aspen partners are DJ and producer Cedric Gervais and Raj Kumar, founder and CEO of RDM Hospitality, according to The Aspen Times. That is the familiar path for a well-placed downtown address.
One block west, at 315 E. Hyman across from the Wheeler Opera House, the building that once held Eric's Bar and later Gravity Haus took the other path. Since its grand opening on Sept. 17, 2026, ThreeFifteen has been filled with local operators. Its tenants include a neighborhood market and kitchen, eight artist studios, a tattoo shop, a vintage store, a flexible event room and a newsroom. The people behind it describe it as a test of whether local tenants can make prime core space work. Part of that test runs on a deadline that arrives this winter.
The building's second life started with a lease that wasn't renewed. Hoffmann Media Group bought the Aspen Daily News in February, and the new owners chose not to renew the paper's longtime offices at 625 E. Hyman Ave. Publisher David Cook went looking for what he called a "soft landing" and asked developer Mark Hunt about leasing a couple of unused offices at 315 E. Hyman. Hunt encouraged him to take on much of the building and build something new around it.
The Aspen Daily News feature on the opening puts the stakes plainly. Office and retail space for locals in the downtown core has been a talking point for years, and as rents rose, the idea "became more wishful thinking than anything." The same piece notes that most downtown landlords are pursuing leases with national and international companies. Cook wanted to try the opposite. "We wanted to set out to prove that locals could do something that was as reliable and meaningful, both from an output perspective as well as a well-curated perspective," he told the paper. "We're really hoping to shift the trend back towards favoring locals for these important buildings in downtown Aspen."
Cook credits the landlord. According to the Daily News, the Hunt family could have pursued considerably larger commercial tenants and backed the local concept instead. That makes the experiment as much about the owner's math as the tenants' foot traffic, since the building has to be worth keeping local for a landlord who could have pursued larger tenants.
Of everything in ThreeFifteen, the food operation is where a resident is most likely to judge the experiment, because it's the reason to come back on an ordinary Tuesday. Sisters Liz and Sondra Savickas run both upstairs food-and-beverage spaces. They had been developing an idea for a neighborhood market and learned in May that Cook was assembling a locally focused building. The idea grew into two businesses.
According to Eddy's own site, the schedule right now is:
The menu lists avocado toast, house-made quiche, a Chicken Caesar Parm Crunch Wrap and the signature Eddy salad, along with a full coffee bar, cocktails, beer and wine. The site also calls the market's chicken salad "famous" and pitches it for a stop on the way up the mountain. Liz Savickas described the food to the Daily News as "all-American" and "very approachable": salads, sandwiches, wraps, chicken Parmesan, meatball subs, family recipes and rotating specials.
The early-opening, daily schedule fits the building's purpose. A restaurant built for winter crowds can afford to go dark in late October. A neighborhood market can't, because its regulars are the people who are still in town.
The Aspen Arts Club upstairs is the piece with the clearest deadline. When Cook brought Buckhorn Public Arts founder Tim Sack into the project, Sack was already talking with donors Mark Pincus and Hilary Shaw about a long-running problem for working artists in Aspen: finding affordable space. With their support, Buckhorn leased eight offices and turned them into rent-free studios. Each artist gets a six-month residency. The two local papers report different lease terms. The Daily News says the offices were leased for a year, and The Aspen Times describes an 18-month lease.
The Aspen Times reported that the first cohort started July 1 and is scheduled to stay through Jan. 1, 2027. That means the eight artists working there now have about two months left. Sack estimated that six of them had never had a dedicated studio before. "We're truly giving them their first step into a place to work in the community and allowing them to expand their practice," he told the Daily News.
The Aspen Arts Club residency page lists the cohort as Rae Lampe, Kendra Lauren, Jamison Menard, Carol Breen, Abril Ere, Aggie Flores, Axel Livingston and Greta Zaveckaite. Local coverage fills in several of their crafts:
Breen's December target and the Jan. 1 end date fall within weeks of each other. Work started in these rooms this summer is reaching the public just as the first residents rotate out. Under either lease term, there is room for another six-month cohort after this one.
Downstairs, Buckhorn also runs The Grove, a flexible community and event space in the part of the building where Eric's Bar used to be. According to the Daily News, it has already hosted comedy, yoga, breathwork and private gatherings, and its partners have floated speaker series, receptions and larger branded events. Cook calls it a "one-of-one" space in Aspen.
Its most recent public program was aimed at younger residents. On Oct. 8, The Grove and the Aspen Arts Club held Teen Art Night for grades 9 through 12, with art led by Rae Lampe, gaming, a movie and snacks. Tickets were $20, with scholarships available, according to the Aspen Public Radio community calendar. The Daily News described the evening as a pilot that could become monthly if it worked. A second date in November would be a good sign that it did.
The remaining tenants round out the building's case that local businesses can fill an anchor property downtown:
Hunt described the mix to the Daily News as "office, retail, food and beverage, and other local businesses," and said that "Aspen benefits when we can find creative ways to put good spaces to work, support local entrepreneurs and add something positive to the community."
Cook told the Daily News he hopes the project will show that keeping prime commercial spaces in local hands can be economically viable while also adding life downtown. The first winter will provide the evidence. Guest House opens on Dec. 31 a block east, after its partners bought out Madame Ushi's other partners and reworked that venue over the summer. On the same stretch of Hyman, ThreeFifteen enters its first ski season with a market open every day of the week, a kitchen open five days, and a studio floor that turns over on New Year's Day.
The building's design means everyday use counts toward that measure. Liz Savickas described the project to the Daily News as a kind of downtown block party, a place to get coffee, run into a friend, meet an artist working upstairs or catch an event downstairs. Through the offseason, that starts when Eddy's Marketplace opens at 7 a.m. across from the Wheeler.
If you own commercial or residential property in Aspen's core, or are thinking about buying, Ashley Feddersen and Team Tarumianz at Aspen Snowmass Sotheby's International Realty can walk you through how the downtown tenant mix is changing block by block. Schedule a confidential consultation.
Stay up to date on the latest real estate trends.
