WSJ. MAGAZINE

IN JUNE, Aspen's City Council members gathered for a presentation from the mountain town's largest employer about the state of its business -- and future of the place itself.

"What does Aspen want to be?" read one slide prepared by David Tanner, president and CEO of Aspen One, which owns four mountains, the five-star Little Nell hotel, multiple restaurants and lodging for over 1,000 employees.

The deck laid out three options: "A ski town." "A gated community for the ultra-wealthy." "A playground for influencers."

Aspen has been soul-searching for half a century, since hippie ski bums began ceding ground to luxury real-estate developers. But the question of its identity has become more urgent as the city of roughly 7,000 has transformed into a year-round billionaire retreat.

It was time for the community to confront the headwinds it was facing, Tanner and his fellow executives told the council. As in other resort towns, hotels and ski mountains were charging dizzying rates to keep up with operational costs. Housing shortages were hurting the labor market. Higher temperatures were shortening the lucrative winter season. And transportation remained a major barrier for visitors.

Aspen caters to the superrich, but it needs the plain-old rich, too. It's a city that's hard to reach -- no direct commercial flights from New York or Miami -- and expensive to stay in. And so, Tanner has thrown himself behind a renovation that could make room for bigger planes and a vital jolt to the economy. "We can't understate the importance of getting the airport done," Tanner told the officials at City Hall.

The construction at Aspen/Pitkin County Airport will shift the 8,006-foot-long runway 80 feet to the west and widen it to 150 feet -- a small move that has stirred as much hubbub in the Rockies as journalist Hunter S. Thompson's "freak power" campaign for sheriff of Pitkin County in 1970.

"It's like an existential crisis," says Jed Bernstein, who runs Theatre Aspen, a performing arts nonprofit. "Who are we? What do we stand for?"

Aspen is a place where gossip travels as fast as Moncler-clad skiers on steep runs. As the city contends with a string of challenges -- declining snowfall and plummeting real-estate sales among them -- it is the runway reconstruction that has become one of the hottest-button topics. It has crept its way into dinner-table fodder at Ellina, where patrons wolf down $89 steaks. Some locals spun up a WhatsApp group to dish on all things airport. A rabbi referenced the runway overhaul in a recent sermon.

The airport is expected to close in April 2027 and reopen just before the ski season begins on Thanksgiving Day. Local businesses are adjusting their forecasts accordingly.

Pitkin County Dry Goods -- a multibrand luxury boutique that's become a regular stop for chichi shoppers -- had its highest-grossing day in five decades this summer. But next year, David Fleisher, its stubble-bearded octogenarian owner, is preparing for a downturn.

"We're planning our purchasing down 18%," says Fleisher about next summer's plans, wearing a James Perse T-shirt and Maison Margiela sneakers, on a rooftop overlooking tree-lined Aspen Mountain in August.

Pitkin County Commissioner Greg Poschman has heard estimates of as much as a 20% decrease in visitors. Tanner predicts a 10% dip during the airport shutdown. But ultimately, he says, "no one has a clue."

OVER THE PAST few years, Aspen's airport has closed its runway for a few weeks each spring to address cracks and deterioration. It costs roughly $6 million to complete the yearly repairs, but the Federal Aviation Administration recently told Pitkin County that it would stop funding renovations unless Aspen added more distance between the runway and taxiway to mitigate collision risks.

For more than two decades, it operated under a waiver of sorts from the FAA, which typically requires airports of Aspen's design classification to have at least 400 feet of distance between the runway centerline and taxiway. There are currently 320 feet.

In order to receive federal funding, "we have to become compliant with the FAA standards for runway-taxiway separation," says Aspen/Pitkin County Airport director Diane Jackson.

Experiencing hours-long delays and diversions out of Aspen's airport is as much a part of the local experience as spotting bears during hikes. Jackson says that disruptions could become more regular if the runway isn't fixed in the near future. She is confident the work on the runway will be completed by the time lifts are poised to carry skiers thousands of feet up Aspen's mountains.

"We're doing so many enabling projects, from stockpiling earth to have it ready to go in 2027, to shifting Owl Creek Road, which needs to shift for the runway shift -- all of those items in this enabling work bring in clarity to the runway work next year," says Jackson.

The effort is expected to cost over $250 million, but the FAA will cover 90% of the bill, according to Pitkin County manager Kara Silbernagel. Francie Jacober, a Pitkin County commissioner, frames the closure decision as a simple one: Layers beneath the runway are beginning to decompose, which could lead to dangerous conditions in the future. "Do you want to land on a runway that needs repair?" she asks.

Amory Lovins, a bespectacled and mustachioed 78-year-old physicist and former MacArthur grant recipient, doesn't buy the safety rationale. "That's clearly a fake argument," he says on an early Thursday evening in August, wearing a Western-style hat and savoring two scoops of gelato from Paradise Bakery.

Lovins launched Aspen Fly Right, a nonprofit that is opposed to the expansion of Aspen's airfield, four years ago. He has given $20,000 to the group, which has conducted environmental research, purchased newspaper advertising and hosted events. Other donors to the cause include Jerry Murdock, the co-founder of Insight Partners, the $90 billion software-investment firm.

Lovins co-founded the energy nonprofit RMI, formerly known as the Rocky Mountain Institute, with a focus on efficiency and renewables. He supports modernizing the airport but is worried widening the distance between the taxiway and runway will welcome bigger planes filled with more passengers, adding congestion to Aspen's already-clogged roads. "They make Aspen very likely to get nonstop flights into new markets such as New York, Boston, Miami, which would increase traffic," he says.

New routes to the mountain town have yet to be announced. "That is an airline decision that they may or may not make," says Jackson.

Both advocates and critics agree that the runway work likely means more uber-wealthy visitors will have the ability to land their planes at Aspen/Pitkin County Airport. Today, the airport's configuration is too compact to accommodate many large private planes, so some A-listers -- including Kim Kardashian and John Mayer -- fly into Rifle Garfield County Airport, about 65 miles away from Aspen's downtown. But after the runway project, the Aspen airport's wingspan limit of 95 feet is poised to grow up to 118 feet, possibly allowing bigger jets, such as Gulfstream G650ERs, to land.

ANN SIOCHI, a West Virginia resident, still plans on visiting Aspen next summer, during the closure, though she'll be driving almost four hours from Denver International Airport to get there.

"We met one lady who comes every summer who is not going to come next year because of the inconvenience of not being able to fly directly into Aspen," she says on a Saturday morning farmers' market excursion in town. "I have heard that maybe from three or four other people."

For neighboring towns and airports, the closure is an opportunity to reach a new clientele. "Starting last year, we began boosting our marketing in our drive markets," says Snowmass Tourism marketing director Virginia McNellis. The main shopping hub in Snowmass is about 15 minutes from Aspen's airport, and the hope is that travelers will drive instead of fly.

Eagle County Regional Airport -- about 90 minutes away from Aspen by car -- is expecting to nearly double the number of flights it regularly serves during the summer period. It is also spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to boost its infrastructure, including adding parking spots, to prepare for the influx of passengers.

Signature Aviation, which oversees the private-jet operations at that airport, is also expecting more jet-setters. "We'll bring in additional fuel trucks. We'll bring in and house additional employees to make sure that we're meeting the demand," says Jim Hopkins, an executive at the company.

Planned construction along Interstate 70, which connects Eagle Airport and Aspen, will likely mean congestion. It's worrying some small-business owners. "You can't market it like, 'Don't worry, you can drive,' when the main avenue to drive might be down to one lane," says Jill Carnevale, the owner of Ellina.

Kurt Ravenschlag, who runs the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority, which is the public transportation provider in Aspen, says Pitkin County is exploring adding shuttle services connecting Colorado airports, such as Eagle and Denver, to Aspen. It is unclear how much it could cost passengers.

As plans to cushion the closure's impact progress, the exact root of the decision to shut down the airport is still hotly contested. It has led to a tony version of an old western shoot-out, with opinion pieces in Aspen's two local newspapers replacing revolver bullets and $8 matcha lattes at Sant Ambroeus swapped for 10-cent beers.