A new club is invigorating Aspen’s cultural life and seeks to foster local enterprise, too.
Who wants to live in the mountains? And more importantly – why?
After clocking up a career’s worth of glittering achievements, including earning an MBA from Harvard, co-founding iVillage.com, and feathering her cap as one of the first women to lead an IPO, Candice Olson made the move many only dream of. After first coming to Aspen in 1970, in 2018 she upped sticks from Manhattan to the mountains.
“I don’t like cocktail parties and I didn’t come to Aspen to join any board,” explains the avid bump skier, trail runner, and mountain biker. But she also knew that was not going to be enough to make Aspen a long-term home.
“I wanted to get out of the virtual community and get into the real-people community.”
Fueled by her love of community and looking to fill a void she felt existed in her adopted town, Candice cultivated a new and intimate space: “A place where, like in the 70s, people dropped their identifiers and came together out of love for the mountains. Where billionaires and ski kids would bump into each other and interact. A piece of original, authentic Aspen.”
In 2019, she expanded her small design-forward café to create Here House, a members’ clubhouse focused on the arts, on discussion, on intellectual intercourse among a diversity of people – “unlike, say, the Mountain Club which is distinguished by wealth”. Members are selected from “full-time and part-time locals, contributors, compassionate go-getters, eclectic collaborators, and hungry intellectual seekers”. Levels of entry range from $50 day passes up to Patron Circle at $5000 per year. “We have young people aged 25 to 40 sitting side by side with movers and shakers. I love the idea that people come together and find depth.”
Here House membership currently numbers 140 and is, according to Candice, comprised half of artists, spiritual leaders, counselors, and family people. The other half spring from Aspen’s wealthy communities, some of whom are second homeowners. The club seeks to act as a social leveler and intellectual challenger – mounting events, parties, readings and concerts that variously raise money for causes, champion local artists, and unpick issues facing the local community and beyond.
Among Here House assorted interests, supporting local enterprise over big chains. “We have the power of the purse,” she enthuses. “I now buy all my clothes in Aspen and I have a list of fabulous local restaurants to share. Small business – not chains – have always been part of Aspen and we have more power than we think through commerce, not government. I call it ‘radically local’ but this movement is not against anything, it’s for things. Patron members at Here House are setting that example.”
