Drive past the Tavern on a Wednesday in July and you can hear two arguments at once. One is about noise, traffic, and 300,000 square feet of proposed development at the racetrack up the road. The other, older and harder to settle, is about which version of Woody Creek the neighborhood is trying to protect.
The Pitkin Board of County Commissioners takes up the Woody Creek Raceway redevelopment application on July 22. The paperwork is technical. The subtext is not.
What Is Actually Being Decided On July 22
The 45-acre racetrack property changed hands on June 24 to brothers-in-law Todd Jacobs and Bret Richheimer for $17 million. The sellers were a group associated with the Aspen Motorsports Club, which had run the site as a members-only operation for decades. Charter member Wayne Ducote said there were other interested buyers, and that the group sold to Jacobs and Richheimer because they had confidence the pair could perform the modernization the track needed.
The application in front of the county is not a light refresh. As presented by Chris Bendon of BendonAdams, who is managing the project, the plan includes:
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Track | Modern safety upgrades to the existing course |
| Buildings | Additional race car storage, maintenance facilities, an updated member clubhouse |
| Employee housing | 14 units housing around 26 people |
| Utilities | A wastewater treatment facility |
| Other | A gun range |
| Scale, per opposition filings | Approximately 300,000 square feet of development, described as a year-round facility |
On Wednesday, July 16, the new owners hosted neighbors at the site, taking questions and offering laps around the track ahead of the hearing. Jacobs drove his own Porsche as a noise demonstration. That framing, owner-as-neighbor rather than developer-as-outsider, is the pitch the applicants will bring to the BOCC.
The Two Woody Creeks Sitting In The Same Room
The character argument only makes sense if you notice that Woody Creek has never had one character to protect.
The community is centered on the Woody Creek Tavern, a well-known landmark set along a county road and somewhat concealed from Highway 82. Adjacent to the tavern is a trailer park and a range of homes from modest older structures to newer upscale builds, with an eclectic mix of mansions, ranches, and funky homes lining the valley up to the old mining and logging community of Lenado. Hunter S. Thompson lived here for most of his life, and neighbors have included Ed Bradley, Don Henley, John Oates, and Don Johnson. The Tavern once kept a jar on the bar collecting a mock legal defense fund for Ken Lay.
Against that backdrop, the racetrack is not an intrusion. It was built in the early 1960s after Colorado banned street racing in 1955. Motorsports have been part of the valley's texture for as long as most current residents have owned property here.
What is new is scale. In a letter to the Aspen Times, a resident whose family has been in Woody Creek for generations wrote that the track has existed for more than 50 years and that many neighbors have accepted its seasonal operations as part of the area's history, but that expansion into a year-round facility with roughly 300,000 square feet of development and a shooting range is a dramatic departure from what has existed for decades, threatening the rural character, open space, natural beauty, and quiet way of life.
That is the frame the Caucus will bring. Susan Taylor, moderator of the Woody Creek Caucus, questioned at the open house how much of the old track was actually going to be preserved. On the other side of the same conversation, longtime neighbor and former club member Lee Schumacher said he studied the plans, thinks the new owners are addressing the real problems, considers some of the complaints overblown, and supports membership options accessible to a wider portion of the population.
Two neighbors, one road, two Woody Creeks.
The Infrastructure Argument Almost Nobody Is Making Directly
The most consequential piece of the application may be the one that reads as a footnote. Bendon told Open Space and Trails the project proposes electric bikes for all residents, guests, and patrons to use to get down to Woody Creek, where RFTA provides seasonal service, or up to the Brush Creek park and ride.
Read that as a land use planner would. The applicant is arguing that a 45-acre motorsports facility can share the same trail and transit corridor that current residents use to bike into Aspen for dinner or reach the four ski mountains without moving a car.
Open Space and Trails, in its written feedback, worried that e-bike riders arriving from the track might not understand local trail etiquette, and asked developers to provide training on the "Slow and Say Hello" ethics, while acknowledging that the bikes would likely lower vehicle traffic. The department is not opposed. It is bargaining, requesting stronger commitments to trail improvements before signing off. Commissioner-level pushback captured a version of the same tension: fewer cars on the road, but more cars on the track, plus 15 to 20 full-time employees living on site with roughly another five to ten non-employee residents.
For a resident who bikes the Rio Grande Trail into town on summer mornings, that is the section of the staff report worth reading twice.
Why Timing Matters More Than Usual
Two other events frame the hearing.
First, fire season. On Monday, July 13, Aspen Fire Protection District contained a vehicle fire near Twining Flats after Pano AI cameras and multiple 911 callers reported smoke in the Woody Creek area. Firefighters found the vehicle off the road near the Woody Creek racetrack, with the vehicle and surrounding vegetation on fire. The incident was small, contained quickly, and unrelated to track operations. It is also the sort of detail commissioners will notice when reading an application that proposes a gun range and expanded year-round activity on the same parcel.
Second, memory. Last fall, a small wildfire on the south side of the Woody Creek drainage between Woody Creek and Starwood, dispatched to Aspen Fire around 3:38 p.m. on Sunday, October 5, was later determined by the U.S. Forest Service to be on federal land. The Woody Creek Fire burned in timber and brush, was roughly half an acre in size, and was caused by lightning. Neighbors have not forgotten how quickly a half-acre becomes a conversation about evacuation routes on a valley served by one main road.
Any hearing about intensifying use of a single-access parcel in July 2026 is going to be read through that lens, whether or not it appears in the formal record.
What To Watch On July 22
For residents who plan to follow the hearing rather than attend, three questions will tell you where this is heading.
- How much of the "old track" survives in the plan. This is Taylor's question and it is the one the Caucus will keep returning to. A modernized racing surface with new safety infrastructure is a different application than a rebuilt facility that happens to sit on the same footprint. The distinction matters for zoning precedent.
- Whether Open Space and Trails' trail commitments become conditions of approval. Written concerns from a county department are one thing. Enforceable conditions attached to the permit are another. Watch for language that ties the e-bike program, rider education, and trail improvements to a schedule.
- The gun range. It is the element of the application least connected to the racetrack's historical use and the one most likely to be treated as severable. If commissioners want to grant something and deny something, this is where the line often gets drawn.
None of these questions have a clean answer in the file. That is why the hearing exists.
For The People Who Actually Live Here
The larger point is that Woody Creek's identity has always been a negotiation between the ranchers, the writers, the racers, the anglers on the Roaring Fork, the cyclists on the Rio Grande Trail, and the crowd at the Tavern bar. The racetrack application is the current form of that negotiation. It will not be the last.
If you own a home along Upper River Road, up Woody Creek Road toward Lenado, or on one of the mesas above the valley, the outcome on July 22 will shape sightlines, evening quiet, trail traffic, and the terms of the next application that lands at the county. It is worth watching closely, even if racing is not your thing.
For owners weighing how any of this affects long-term positioning, use, or leasing strategy on a Woody Creek property, Jamay Shook offers confidential Aspen real estate strategy sessions. Request one when the questions get specific.
