13 minute read
Mountain heart, city style by Beth Buehler
19 73
DRAWN TO CRESTED BUTTE SINCE ITS ROWDY, DIRT-STREET DAYS,
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MOUNTAIN city style HEART,
If you heard that one of the people buying up downtown Crested Butte real estate was a big-time Denver development guy, you might cast a wary eye his way. But Jeff Hermanson put down roots in Crested Butte before its streets were paved, and he has hiked, biked, skied and fostered friendships in the valley for almost half a century. He has owned and operated restaurants here and assisted many local nonprofits as a board member, advisor and contributor. Now, having helped shaped some of Denver’s most iconic places, he’s turning his creativity back to the town that never lost its hold on him.
In Denver, where Hermanson spent much of his time for three-plus decades, his name and visionary skills are well known. He is the former owner of Larimer Square, one of the principal developers behind the Denver Union Station renovation, and part of the team building Populus hotel in the Civic Center Park neighborhood.
He continues to have a stake in more than 20 Denver restaurants, helping chefs over the years bring their visions to reality, such as Jennifer Jasinski (creator of Rioja, Ultreia, Bistro Vendome and Stoic + Genuine), Dana Rodriquez (visionary behind Work + Class, Super Mega Bien and Cantina Loca) and Troy Guard (founder of TAG Restaurant Group). All three took time away from
Jeff Hermanson being honored at the Crested Butte Wine & Food Festival (above); strolling Larimer Square in Denver; and skiing near Crested Butte decades ago.
Courtesy photo
busy restaurants to cook for the 2022 Crested Butte Wine and Food Festival’s Vintner Gala + Auction, where Hermanson was honored as the festival’s founder.
While his work is far from done in Denver, Hermanson’s lifestyle has shifted to Crested Butte, other than a few days a month spent in Colorado’s capital city. With years of placemaking and leadership under his belt, it’s timely for Hermanson to play a role in this mountain town’s future.
“My professional life has been in Denver, and I was a little oblivious to what was going on in Crested Butte,” he admitted. “Crested Butte is going through a tsunami of change, and there is a real opportunity to influence the outcome. It’s never going to be what it was in 1973 when I moved here, but change creates opportunity, and part of that opportunity is driven by the people moving here.”
Nolan Blunck
DISCOVERING THE BUTTE
The Southern California native’s story may strike a chord with many who land in ski towns. He completed an undergraduate degree in Santa Barbara and a graduate degree in San Francisco and sneaked in two winter quarters as a ski bum in Lake Tahoe. “It was only natural to take one more year to ski in Colorado,” Hermanson recalled. “My college roommate followed his brother to Crested Butte, and I followed sight unseen.”
Hermanson visited Aspen and Telluride a year later, but Crested Butte had already worked its magic. “Like many people driving up Highway 135 or over Kebler Pass, I said, ‘This is a special place where I want to raise my kids.’ It just captivated me. Crested Butte is a real community – a community on steroids.”
In what seemed like a heartbeat, he went from planning to spend one or two years in Crested Butte to having a place here for nearly five decades. And today, in an unexpected but welcome turn of events, he is raising a daughter, 10-year-old Lilli, in this community with his partner, Theresa Lydick, who also has a grown daughter. They adopted Lilli six years ago after Theresa’s sister passed away.
Hermanson is having a blast being a father later in life. The father-daughter duo went on a ski trip to Portillo in Chile this summer, and they have been heli-skiing in Canada.
“My latest reinvention has been as a parent. Before, I watched kids from a distance. The greatest gift you can give is a childhood in Crested Butte,” he emphasized. “I compare it to Denver, and the amount of freedom kids can have here is awe inspiring.”
Lucy Beaugard
BUILDING A CAREER
Hermanson’s deep connection to Crested Butte started in his early years here. After arriving in 1973, he started working as a waiter at Penelope’s Restaurant, located in the Elk Avenue building that now houses Chopwood Mercantile and Ryce. (He purchased the property and transformed it through an adaptive reuse project more than 15 years ago.)
After three years in Crested Butte, Hermanson made his first move to own restaurants and real estate. His first eatery was Slogar, a fine-dining restaurant that was sold nine years later to Mac Bailey, who kept the name but changed the concept to family-style fried chicken dinners. Next, Hermanson bought the Artichoke Restaurant and building located at the base of Crested Butte Mountain Resort in 1979 and became a partner in Soupçon for a few years in the 1980s.
A move to Denver resulted in the establishment of Larimer Associates in 1987 and the acquisition of Larimer Square in 1993. Hermanson and his team transformed Larimer Square, one of the city’s most significant historic blocks, into one of the best-recognized collections of independent boutiques and chef-driven restaurants in the state. After owning Larimer Square for more than 25 years, he sold the district in late 2020, knowing it was time to move on.
In recognition of his efforts to reenergize Denver’s retail, restaurant and entertainment scene, Hermanson was inducted into the Denver and Colorado Travel Industry Hall of Fame in 2015, and the Colorado Restaurant Association honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. LIFESTYLE // INVESTMENT // COMMERCIAL // LUXURY
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EMBRACING THE FUTURE
Hermanson still owns what is known today as the Avalanche Bar & Grill building at the ski area base, and he plans to open a restaurant there. “The bigger goal is having a dialogue with the other base area owners to see if there is an opportunity to collaborate and re-envision the base area,” he said. “When I owned the Artichoke, during the summer people would drive from town to have dinner there. I think there could be a viable option for the same today.”
What about his vision for the three buildings recently purchased on Elk Avenue? Hermanson is teaming up with local restaurateur Kyleena Falzone to develop the two adjacent properties at 208 and 212 Elk Avenue. The Last Steep will remain a faster, casual eatery with a refreshed space and menu. A major renovation will transform the former Montanya Distillers location into an elevated dining experience around a wood-burning hearth, with plans to open in summer 2023. As for the building across the street, occupied by the Breadery, he plans to keep on working with Meg Antonczyk, whom Hermanson describes as “an incredible restaurateur.”
Hermanson and Lydick also are building a new residence in Crested Butte that is scheduled for completion early next year. While the house he built in town 49 years ago (and has transformed over the years) oozes charm, it’s not ideal for a family. Regardless of a full plate in Crested Butte, Hermanson continues to participate in the future of Denver as a partner with Urban Villages, a sustainability-focused development company. Urban Villages is building the 265-room Populus hotel, the country’s first carbonpositive hotel that is set for completion in late 2023, and working on a large initiative in the Golden Triangle district, which includes the state capitol and numerous museums. “We have successfully assembled a pretty big property and are in the middle of executing a $500 million project that is all about urban placemaking, livability, walkability and sustainability and will further contribute to the architecture of the city,” Hermanson explained. While he has enjoyed an enviable career, he has also learned tough lessons along the way. “I’ve had some really good successes, but they have been tempered with really good setbacks. Our greatest learning experiences are from our setbacks; they helped shape who I am,” he said. “Through setbacks, I realized my talents are fairly slim. My greatest talent is identifying people to work with who have different skill sets from mine.”
FOCUSING ON FOOD SECURITY
For example, he teamed up with Sara Brito to co-found Good Food Media Network, Inc. and the Good Food 100 list, a rating system for restaurants based on sustainability and ESG factors (environmental, social and governance) that is now part of the Colorado Restaurant Association.
He also was involved with Denver-based We Don’t Waste from its beginning, serving on the nonprofit’s board of directors for several years. The organization works to reduce hunger and food waste in the Denver area by recovering quality, unused food from the food industry (restaurants, caterers, venues, grocery stores and more) and delivering it to nonprofit partners.
“The founder [Arlan Preblud] drove around in a Volvo wagon picking up food and has grown it into a really successful and effective nonprofit,” Hermanson said. “These endeavors start as dreams and with the right leadership and collaboration can make a difference.”
After seeing Lilli working in the garden at Crested Butte Community School with Mountain Roots and helping sell the produce from a stand in the parking lot, Hermanson realized change often happens best on a smaller scale at the local level. At the same time, he was involved in a garden on top of a Larimer Square parking garage to demonstrate food can be grown in cities; he also partnered with the Auraria Campus in Denver on events dealing with education in the food realm.
“This tiny community in Crested Butte was hitting it out of the park and educating on this topic, while I was on a parallel path in the city,” he said. “In Crested Butte, on a very simple level, they were being more effective than we were.”
Since then, Hermanson has become more involved with Mountain Roots, which in 2021 presented him with an Inspiration Award for his support of local food. He described the organization as a valuable “agent of change” that can be replicated in other communities and integrated into the Crested Butte Wine and Food Festival in a variety of ways.
This year, at a festival seminar titled “Seed to Skin: Scrappy Bartending,” representatives from Mountain Roots and Carbondale-based Marble Distilling demonstrated how delicious cocktails can be made from food items that might otherwise be thrown away. “It wouldn’t be a wholesale shift at the festival; many chefs and winemakers have the same interest,” Hermanson explained.
Lydick, a nutritionist, shares his interest in food and exercise and the key role they play in people’s lives. “We met through a friend of a friend. It was good timing for both of us,” he said. “Her focus is on food as medicine. She believes diet – the choice of fuel for your body – is more important than time spent working out.”
Hermanson also invests his time in land conservation and community building, serving on the advisory committee for the Town of Crested Butte’s Community Compass long-range planning process and previously as a Crested Butte Land Trust board member and president for eight years. The affordable housing issue also is firmly on his radar.
“Nothing can happen without addressing the housing crisis. We have a 25-acre parcel in Gunnison that we envision as workforce housing driven by a livable, walkable community,” he said.
Having a worthwhile impact on the people and places he cares about is at the heart of Hermanson’s ethos. “We all want to make a difference, whether it’s in our family, neighborhood, community or world,” he said. “I want to make a difference, however that looks.” b
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CHEFS AS ARTISTS – and provocateurs
Jeff Hermanson envisioned the possibilities for a wine and cuisine festival in Crested Butte and rallied his resources at Larimer Associates to launch the event in 2008. Crested Butte Wine and Food Festival began partnering with the Center for the Arts in 2013 and has become one of the organization’s largest annual fundraisers. He shared a few thoughts about the event.
HOW IT’S DIFFERENT:
There continues to be the opportunity to make it Crested Butte-centric and less like a typical wine and food event. Since the early days of Crested Butte Wine and Food Festival, we have tried to integrate things that were beyond the typical curriculum and added the “eat, drink and think” concept.
BEING HONORED IN 2022:
It was a huge validation. My story is about resiliency, reinvention and partnerships. It was really rewarding to have three of my restaurant partners there and the collaboration with the Center for the Arts, as the arts and restaurants were totally impacted by Covid.
FESTIVAL HAPPENINGS:
The festival lineup is delegated to the staffers who make it happen. I love the relationship with the Center for the Arts and its executive team. I really think they can take the Center to the next level.
BUILDING BLOCKS:
There’s an opportunity with Crested Butte Wine and Food Festival to not only produce a gentrified program around the arts of both food and wine, but also to partner with Mountain Roots and bring a whole different dimension to talk about food in the valley and food insecurity. Chefs historically are provocateurs and want to change the world. They also are interested in sustainability, regenerative agriculture and changing the food system.
