By Helen Olsson By Helen Olsson | April 1, 2024 | Home & Real Estate, People, Home & Real Estate Feature, Home & Real Estate,
Over the last half-century, Tony Mazza has built a commercial real estate empire in Aspen—while looking out for the little guy.
Tony Mazza and Mona Look-Mazza in Aspen
In 1971, Tony Mazza drove from New York to Aspen in a convertible Camaro without snow tires. Like so many Aspenites, he came for a week and never left .
Mazza grew up in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood, graduated from Fordham Law School, and clerked in the late 1960s with Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon, Richard Nixon’s law firm. He realized New York wasn’t for him. “I didn’t want to be on Wall Street in a law firm, and they probably didn’t want me,” Mazza says. In Aspen, his first jobs included cleaning buildings and clerking for John Wayne’s lawyer, David Slemon. “He paid me $4 an hour.”
The couple with violinist Gil Shaham at the Aspen Music Festival in 2022
“What the press has written about Aspen in the 1970s is all understated,” Mazza says. “It was the wildest, most incredible place.” He’d come for the skiing, and it didn’t disappoint. “Having skied in the East, I realized I didn’t know what I was doing.” Mazza, now 77, still logs 50 days a year on skis.
At a time when most of Aspen’s streets were still dirt, Mazza and Frank Woods founded M&W Properties, building their first building in the late ’70s (located on Hopkins Ave., it houses the French Alpine Bistro, which most locals know as the creperie) and the Mill Street Plaza building in 1982. “Back then, Frank and I did it all. We would swab the floors if necessary,” Mazza says. Today, M&W has grown into the largest commercial space owner in Aspen’s core.
French Alpine Bistro is another one of M&W’s tenants.
In 1996, Mazza met Mona Look at a Jazz Aspen event. “She was wearing a short fringe leather skirt and cowboy boots, and I thought, Oh, my god,” Mazza says. Jeanne Bailey, then married to Janus Funds founder Tom Bailey, introduced the couple. “Jeanne said, ‘This is Tony Mazza. He’s a member of the dysfunctional men’s club.’” Mona fell for Tony despite the lukewarm intro, and they married in 1999.
The Mazzas live on top of Red Mountain in a tony neighborhood, but it wasn’t always so glitzy. “I bought this property in 1973 with a little shack on it with linoleum floors that Fritz Benedict had built in the 1960s—for $65,000,” he says. “My father thought it was one of the stupidest purchases he’d ever seen.” But that’s what fires Mazza up. “When people say ‘it’s impossible,’ that’s when I get interested.”
Campo de Fiori leases space from M&W
Mazza’s modus operandi is doing things differently, which explains why he continues to offer below-market commercial leases in a town where high rents are a sore subject. More than three decades ago, when locals Carrie and Larkin Horn opened the toy store Aspen Eclectic, they were soon priced out of their retail space. They met Mazza, who worked to move the shop into his commercial space. “Tony has been understanding during punishing periods like the recession, the pandemic and our off-season. He wants us to succeed,” Carrie says. “His under-market commercial lease values have allowed us to stay in business.”
In April, Mazza offered chef and entrepreneur Mawa McQueen the coveted space formerly occupied by Starbucks (on the corner of Cooper Ave. and Mill St.). For years, McQueen had been fighting for a space in downtown Aspen to open another outpost of The Crêpe Shack. Mazza wanted the new tenant to be a local business. “It was a great space, but I didn’t have the means to rent it,” McQueen says. Her realtor told her Mazza wanted to talk. “He said, ‘Mawa, everybody loves you. I want to make things work for you.’ What I was offering wasn’t even half of what he could make,” McQueen says. “How many people are willing to do that to support local?”
At Night on the Nile, Tony Mazza and Mona Look-Mazza were honored for their support of the Buddy Program
While Mazza is determined to help keep independently owned businesses afloat, he acknowledges that in a city with a $141 million annual budget and 7,000 residents, there is a place for the Louis Vuittons and the Guccis. “You just can’t have 100% high-end retail, and, conversely, you can’t have all ma and pa shops, ” he says.
“ASPEN IS THE GREATEST PLACE IN THE WORLD. I’VE LIVED HERE 52 YEARS, AND I JUST LOVE THIS COMMUNITY.” –TONY MAZZA
A quick snap at an Aspen Music Festival fundraiser
Since 1994, Campo de Fiori has leased space from M&W in the Mill Street Plaza building, which also houses Cache Cache, Las Montañas and Brunelleschi’s. “There are other people buying up commercial real estate, and they’re either for pop-ups or the rents are significantly higher,” says Dave Ellsweig, Campo’s general manager. “Tony is a landlord who considers the vibrancy and soul of this town. He’s been unbelievably supportive.”
Mazza is quick to chalk up his success over the years to serendipity. Case in point: Decades ago at Food & Wine, Mazza happened to be standing near a bottle of 1985 Sassicaia when in walked Piero Incisa della Rocchetta, part of the Italian family that makes the legendary wine. They became friends and, in 2004, launched Bodega Chacra, a vineyard in Argentina’s Rio Negro valley, a region known more for its malbecs. “We bought this property with 80-year-old pinot vines and went in with machetes and goats to clean it out,” Mazza says. Today the biodynamic winery makes a pinot noir that wine connoisseur James Suckling called “spectacular.”
The Mazzas at an Aspen Music Festival event
“I feel incredibly blessed,” Mazza says. Both he and Mona have a long history of giving back by supporting philanthropic causes, including the Aspen Music Festival, Aspen Art Museum, AVSC and the Buddy Program. “Aspen is the greatest place in the world. I’ve lived here 52 years, and I just love this community.”
Photography by: PHOTO BY MICHELE CARDAMONE PHOTOGRAPHY; PHOTO BY ALEXIS AHRLING; PHOTO BY HAL WILLIAMS