Here House and former Local Coffee bid farewell | Arts & Entertainment

A significant chapter has come to an end for Candice Olson and Michaela Carpenter, mother-daughter proprietors of Alpina (formerly Local Coffee) and Here House. 

After seven years of operating their restaurant and clubhouse on East Cooper Avenue, the owners have decided to permanently close down their dual-concept business. 

Sunday marked the official closure date, with the space at 614 E. Cooper Ave. now in the hands of Aspen restaurateur Raphael Derly. 

Olson and Carpenter sold the lease to Derly under the approval of the building’s landlord, Tony Mazza, and unlike many turnovers in Aspen’s commercial real estate arena the transition has been seamless, graceful and beneficial for all parties involved, Olson said.

“It’s kind of been this very seamless thing that just seemed like it was meant to be and will allow us to go out on a happy high note,” Olson said. “Because trying to keep this beautiful local space in local hands was really important, so everything felt like, yes, this is the graceful handoff point.” 

For Derly — who opened French Alpine Bistro-Crêperie du Village in 2011 with his former partner, Karin, and has since been involved in various projects in Aspen’s restaurant scene — acquiring the space is a dream come true, he said. It’s been a longtime pursuit for the French-born, Aspen-based restaurateur.

“I’ve always had a big crush on this space. It’s such a beautiful space, there’s something magical in there, you know, the light is beautiful, it’s south exposure and of course, the location is great,” Derly said. “For me, it’s a no brainer, it’s like, I’m in love with this, the potential of the space for me as a designer… I really want to go to the moon with it.” 

Derly partnered with a culinary team based in New York and the renowned chef Cédric Vongerichten, who is the son of Jean-Georges Vongerichten, to bring his vision to life. 

Vongerichten is at the helm of a handful of restaurants in New York — including his French-Indonesian concept, Wayan, and its neighboring Bali-inspired Ma-dé, which offers more of a global seafood cuisine — along with a couple of operations in Indonesia.

Derly said that he and Chef Vongerichten are currently working on a “very fresh and specific menu for Aspen,” and while he’s not yet ready to share the details on what they plan to do conceptually at this point, they’re going to bring something that has “never been done in Aspen,” he said. 

“What we have here, it’s very unique, like we won’t compete with anybody,” Derly said. “We have Cédric, who has his own style, and I do have my own style as a designer and a host — I think that’s a beautiful addition to the Aspen restaurant scene, what we’re about to do.” 

As Derly eagerly embarks on a new chapter in the East Cooper Avenue space — with the goal to launch his restaurant in late June, he said — Olson and Carpenter say a heartfelt goodbye to the business establishment they built together from scratch. 

Looking back 

Carpenter was 22 years old and completing design school in London when she had the idea to open a boutique design store in her hometown of Aspen, called Maker and Place — the beginning of what would evolve into Local Coffee and Here House. 

At university, Carpenter was exploring two avenues that led to the creation of Maker and Place, she said. The first was her exploration of how artists carve out their own space in a saturated market, which she found to be a prohibitive feat, and the second was the ways in which the human species, as creators, utilize “our very humanness” to infuse meaning into the objects and tools that we use every day, she explained. 

“And so when I paired these two ideas together, that was where Maker and Place came from,” Carpenter said. “So we created a design store that had really beautiful objects from these designers and makers, who didn’t otherwise have exposure to their ideal market and client.” 

Carpenter skipped her college graduation to launch Maker and Place in Aspen in summer 2017. The store first opened downtown in the space that now houses Unravel Coffee and Bar, before moving a few months later to its East Cooper Avenue location, where there wasn’t a ton of foot traffic at the time, Carpenter said. 

To mitigate that issue, Carpenter thought back to trips she’d taken with her mom to Amsterdam and recalled the city’s dual-concept retail- and coffee-shop locales that had felt so unique and energized to her and Olson, she said. 

“So we thought, you know, why don’t we add an espresso machine to create another element of activation and really draw people in and make it more of a buzzing space to support all these concepts and ideas,” Carpenter said. “And then Aspen sort of found out about us as having great coffee and a great atmosphere, and that summer, it just exploded.” 

During that busy summer of 2018, Olson said they were removing retail shelves and adding more tables to the space weekly. In leaning into their hit coffee shop concept, they built out a small kitchen in the back area that was used for storage, and Maker and Place became Local Coffee House.

At that point, they were only operating out of one side of the building, but Olson said she had her eyes on the adjacent space that was then an Italian retail boutique. A year later, in 2019, the neighboring space became available, and the mother-daughter duo jumped on the opportunity to expand their business model. 

“Part of it was that once it became a coffee shop, you know, really the whole idea was to create community and a place where people could come sit and hang out and talk, but it got so crowded and so crazy, you couldn’t even hear yourself think,” Olson said. “So we thought, we should have a nice, quieter space where people can really get to know each other.” 

It was the birth of Here House, a private-membership club that was created to attract people who contribute to the Aspen community. They repurposed the space, opening up the wall that separated Local Coffee House and installing a curtain to connect the two concepts. 

With a membership rate far more affordable than other clubhouse concepts, Olson said, Here House launched with 25 charter members, all of whom were local, and has grown to surpass their goal of 111 — the anthropological size of a tribe, she said. 

When the pandemic hit in 2020, Olson and Carpenter had to figure out how they were going to continue creating value and some kind of consumable product for their members. They curated virtual programs, hosting livestream discussions with people like photographer David Hiser, who then donated his iconic photos of 1970s Aspen to the Here House space.

Also during COVID, Here House hosted its Firefly live-music series to support local musicians through a time when they weren’t able to play at any venues in town. Naturally, the clubhouse became a hub for different sectors of the community, cultivating experiences beyond those for just its membership base.

“When we first opened Here House, people did not understand what we were doing,” Carpenter said. “It was very confusing and confronting to a lot of people, and then, I think as they saw us living and breathing our value system of generosity of spirit and innovation, creation, inclusivity and experimentation, people were like, ‘Oh, I get this now,’ and it really started to open up minds

Passing the torch 

Over the past few years, Here House has hosted everything from mental health forums and Socrates Cafés to an 18-part Psychedelic Summer Series and the latest Winter Finance Series. It has been a space for music shows, wine tastings and dinner clubs, and a space for unplugged discussions with community leaders, including former Aspen Skiing Co. CEO Mike Kaplan and the late Bob Braudis, longtime Pitkin County sheriff.

And ultimately, the venue has stood as a “third place” for people to arrive into the community, Carpenter said, “to find their identity in an Aspen that can be confusing and to connect with like-minded humans.”

“I think we opened up a lot of possibility,” she said. “Before Local and before Here House and before Maker and Place, there was no such thing as a dual-concept space in Aspen; there was no such thing as a social club for anyone under the net worth of $5 million; there was no such thing as a community platform that was activated through events and programs and food and beverage, and now we look around, they’re almost on every block.” 

Olson said that in a way, they’re happier to serve as this catalyst within the community rather than run the establishment for 30 more years. 

She explained that Derly first came to them a year ago to inquire about their space, and they considered him taking over one half of the vicinity — the Local Coffee House side — while maintaining their Here House club. However, it became clear to them that a new restaurant would require the use of both spaces, and Olson said that, at the time, she and Carpenter were not ready to give up Here House. 

So in the meantime, the mother-daughter duo reconceptualized the eatery component of their establishment, transforming Local Coffee House into a more elevated lunch and brunch spot, called Alpina — which launched in August and has operated up until Sunday’s final day of service. 

To help pioneer the reimagined eatery, Olson and Carpenter enlisted Colton Black, former general manager of The Little Nell’s Element 47, as Alpina’s food-and-beverage director and co-owner. With Black on board, it was a flourishing collaboration, and the proprietors had a futuristic outlook on their space. But it was short-lived: Black endured a dire accident in the fall that resulted in injuries and a life change. 

“Losing him was really hard for us emotionally,” Olson said. “And we were like, we either have to go through this whole thing again and find someone who’s as amazing as Colton, which seems impossible, or we could think about whether this would be a graceful time to have a chapter change.” 

Carpenter added that when they heard the unfortunate news from Black about not returning, they engaged a broker to explore what options they had, and that same week, in early December, Derly walked in to once again express his interest for the space.

“It was sort of like, a little bit of a universe shock because this is what we were asking for, and this is what was coming through the door, literally,” Carpenter said. “So we just explored the opportunity with him, one thing led to another and it felt really aligned, you know, it was another local coming in to operate something unique and special.” 

And Derly is a passionate man when it comes to such operations.  

“I’m passionate about wine, I’m passionate about food, I’m passionate about hospitality and design,” he said. “So we’re gonna put all the dots together on this restaurant, you know, to have all the pieces of the puzzle come together, I’m gonna be at the space pretty much seven days a week, all day.” 

Olson and Carpenter, on the other hand, enter their own next chapters. Olson is working toward a five-year PhD program in philosophy, cosmology and consciousness; and Carpenter will take on a new full-time role as the director of events and experiences for the Mollie Aspen hotel. 

“I just think taking advantage of this idea that you can do something while your heart is in it, and then before you get completely beat down by it, you can pass it on to other people and let them throw themselves into it,” Olson said. “And the way other people have taken the ball and run already has been really happy for us.”