Bill Koch Sends His 52-Acre Aspen Estate to Auction After Price Cut
Bill Koch is trying a new route for Elk Mountain Lodge, his sprawling Aspen estate: auction. The 52-acre property, which was first marketed at $125 million about a year and a half ago and later reduced to $99 million, will be offered from July 7 to 17 through Concierge Auctions, with Steven Shane of Compass handling the sale.
Koch acquired the former dude ranch in 2007 for $26.5 million and later sold part of the acreage in 2020 for $14.5 million. What remains is a mountain compound with eight structures and more than 25,000 square feet of living space. The main residence, designed by the Aspen firm Rowland+Broughton, measures 16,631 square feet and is joined by seven guest cabins.
Altogether, the estate contains 15 bedrooms and 17 bathrooms. Its amenities are tailored to both entertaining and alpine living: a dining room that seats 20, climate-controlled wine storage, a screening room that can also serve as an altitude-acclimation chamber, a fitness center in the largest guest cabin, an eight-car garage, two ponds, hot tubs, and trails for hiking and cross-country skiing.
Koch, who founded Oxbow Carbon and is part of the family behind Koch Industries, has long moved between business and high-profile collecting and sporting pursuits. He won the America’s Cup in 1992 and, when he first listed Elk Mountain Lodge last year, also had properties on the market in New York City, Palm Beach, Cape Cod, and Paonia, Colorado.
The auction underscores how even the most ambitious private estates can be recast as market events when conventional pricing stalls. In Aspen, where trophy properties often test the limits of the luxury market, Elk Mountain Lodge now enters a public sale process that will reveal how much appetite remains for scale, privacy, and a well-appointed mountain compound.
