Hollywood mogul and Papa‘a Bay property owner Peter Guber sold his 650-acre ranch and mansion in Aspen, Colo. for $46 million last week. Guber’s “Tara” compound at Papa‘a Bay located north of Anahola is reportedly in the process of being
Hollywood mogul and Papa‘a Bay property owner Peter Guber sold his 650-acre ranch and mansion in Aspen, Colo. for $46 million last week.
Guber’s “Tara” compound at Papa‘a Bay located north of Anahola is reportedly in the process of being sold for around $30 million.
The Aspen sale is believed to be a record price for residential property in the Aspen area, and perhaps one of the biggest residential real estate deals ever made in the United States.
Guber, who produced “Rain Man” and “Batman” and is now chairman of Mandalay Pictures, sold the mountain ranch and 15,000-square-foot house Tuesday to Dawn and Roland Arnall of Aspen.
He was asking $63 million for the 650-acre Mandalay Ranch spread located between the Snowmass and Buttermilk ski areas.
He wasn’t disappointed by selling the Colorado ranch for about three quarters of his asking price, according to Robert Ritchie, the real estate broker who was listing the property.
“Everybody’s pleased. We’ve got a happy buyer and a happy seller,” said Ritchie.
Ritchie said the previous record price was $23 million for a house and land near Woody Creek, a community just northwest of Aspen.
The house has seven bedrooms, seven and a half baths, a theater, a gym and a basketball court.
The property also has two guest cabins and a barn with living quarters.
The sale included a snowcat to transport skiers to the ski areas and around the property. It’s an Italian machine that seats eight comfortably and travels at 45 mph, according to Ritchie.
“It rides like a Mercedes,” he said. “That’s how we show the property in the winter.”
Ritchie said officials at Sotheby’s International Realty told him the Mandalay sale was the second or third largest residential real estate transaction in the history of the country. The ranking is difficult to judge because one other big sale was a private deal involving land swaps.
The Pitkin County, Colorado, wildlife biologist, and game wardens with the Colorado Division of Wildlife, have said the property is a vital migration corridor for the Maroon Bells elk herd, which travels from the high ground and lower territory downvalley from Snowmass Village in the fall.
Guber owned Mandalay for 18 years. Some of that time appeared to be bittersweet. He received a public relations black eye in 1992 when Pitkin County took action against him for building illegal structures in sensitive wildlife habitat. Guber agreed to tear down a barn, and the county commissioners in office at the time allowed him to apply to legalize two cabins.
While negotiating a settlement to that dispute, the Guber family suggested to Pitkin County officials that they might grant conservation easements to prohibit development on 613 acres of the ranch. The easements were never granted, leaving some former county officials feeling they were betrayed.
The ranch received more publicity of a somewhat dubious kind in October 1995, when Dan Kitchen was arrested for using a saw to cut a hole in Guber’s fence. Kitchen decided civil disobedience was needed to protest fences that he claimed didn’t allow elk to pass through. Kitchen complimented Mandalay recently for elk-friendly fences.
Regarding his intent to sell his Papa‘a Bay holdings, his Honolulu attorney, Paul Alston, said, “He committed to market and sell this property before any controversy arose about the length of Papa‘a Road for personal reasons which are completely unrelated to any issue of beach access.”
In the aftermath of a beach-access attempt where the four Kauaians were arrested in December, Alston on behalf of Guber’s Mandalay Properties LLC filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, naming Aliomanu resident William Young, Island Access Coalition and others, accusing them of trespassing, slander of title, injurious falsehood, and other charges relating to alleged statements they may have made about a government road running through Guber’s property.
The first court date in the matter is a late-March scheduling conference in Honolulu.
“He (Guber) is pursuing his plan to sell, despite the delays and interference caused by the false claims regarding the road,” Alston said.
“He hopes those efforts will be successful, although others seem intent on preventing the sale. He intends to hold every individual and entity who prevents or delays the sale fully accountable for their wrongful actions and the wrongful actions of those who are acting in their name or on their behalf,” Alston warned.
According to Kaua‘i Mayor, Bryan J. Baptiste, when testifying before the Kaua‘i County Council January 8, he had taken no position on the beach access issue, and that a title search is under way to untangle the issue.
Staff Writer Tom Finnegan may be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) or mailto:tfinnegan@pulitzer.net.
