Anna Stonehouse/The Aspen Times
After a year of speculation about a new home or if they would close completely, the owner of Paradise Bakery said late Monday the iconic Aspen bakery will stay in its current location.
The bakery on the corner of Galena Street and Cooper Avenue in the Volk Plaza has been a downtown gathering place for locals, tourists and others since it opened there in 1981.
In May 2019, The Aspen Times first reported of the potential change after Patterson and his landlord, the Hecht family, could not come up with a new lease and that neighboring tenant Loro Piana, a high-end clothing company based in Italy, would expand into the bakery spot.
The current lease is not set to expire until October 2021, Patterson told The Times last year. Patterson said the outpouring of support after the 2019 announcement led him and his older brother Danny to look for a new place.
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In an email Monday evening, Mark Patterson said the three groups involved in the potential change — the landlords, Loro Piana and Paradise Bakery — had come to an agreement earlier this year to keep the location the same.
Given the current pandemic and the economic crisis, moving locations became a bigger question for all involved, Patterson said Monday. He also said that some of the responses to the potential move “crossed the line to becoming negative and hurtful to our landlord and neighbors.”
Roughly 250,000 to 300,000 customers visit the bakery on an annual basis, Patterson said last year, adding the bakery pays about $250,000 in annual rent. Paradise occupies roughly 1,600 square feet of the space in the Volk Plaza — 600 on the ground level and 1,000 below ground.
The bakery has employed thousands of workers in Aspen since 1981, Patterson said, and also has participated in youth programs at the Aspen schools that give students experience in the workplace.
In the past year, Patterson said he was in talks with local developer Mark Hunt about moving into one of his properties in the downtown area that had outdoor seating.
But with Hunt’s help and working with the Hechts, Patterson said Monday they were grateful to be able to work out an agreement to stay in the current location and will ride out the economic storm caused by the pandemic.
“With the uncertainty regarding the return of summer tourist business, we are moving forward cautiously,” he said in a statement. “It is our hope that the future recovery of the Aspen economy will allow us to realize this opportunity to remain on the Paradise Corner for years to come.”
The Patterson brothers along with longtime friend R.J. Gallagher and the late Carter Holmes opened the bakery as Cookie Munchers Paradise, next to the old Sinclair gas station, on New Year’s Eve in 1981. The Pattersons and partner Bob Duggan originally founded the bakery in 1976 in Long Beach, California.
The Paradise Bakery chain grew to 75 stores in 11 states. The Pattersons sold the Paradise Bakery & Cafe Inc. chain in 2007 to Missouri-based Panera Bread Co., but the brothers kept the Aspen store.
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Paradise Bakery to remain in its original location in downtown Aspen - Aspen Times
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