John Denver Property: Will Windstar Foundation Use Sale Money For Conservation Efforts?

A property near Aspen, Colorado which singer John Denver bought in the late 1970s as headquarters for his Windstar Foundation -- a conservationist group -- is being sold. The 957-acre piece of land was put on the market in September for $13 million. The move has been received by many environmentalists as the unofficial end to Denver's dream of keeping a wide swath of land west of Aspen out of the reach of developers.

According to the Aspen Times, the Windstar Foundation is looking to use the proceeds from the sale to help the institute open a state-of-the-art green office building in Basalt, a town about 20 miles northwest of Aspen. In 1996, the Windstar Foundation and the Rocky Mountain Institute, a think tank on energy efficiency issues, founded the Windstar Land Conservancy to own and manage the land. Currently, the conservancy employs about 20 people at its offices on the property. " He first moved to the Roaring Fork Valley in the late 1960s. He died on Oct. 12, 1997, in a plane crash.

A conservation easement will continue to protect 927 acres of the 957-acre property, mandating that any activity taking place on it be exclusively for wildlife habitat, irrigating and agricultural uses. The easement comes with a guarantee of public access, and cannot be altered, meaning it will theoretically exist in perpetuity.

Still, the sale of the land is considered by some environmentalists as the unofficial end to Denver's vision for the Windstar Foundation, a nonprofit heavily involved in environmental issues.

"Windstar kind of fizzled after John died," said Karmen Dopslaff, a member of the Windstar Land Conservancy's board of directors and former board president of the Windstar Foundation. Dopslaff and other Windstar supporters had struggled to keep the foundation going for years when they learned from one of Denver's partners on the initiative that Denver had felt the foundation should be disbanded and its mission carried out by other local organizations, reported the Aspen Times.

"That's when we realized, 'What are we doing if that's not what John wanted?'" Dopslaff said. "It wasn't easy for those of us who were with Windstar for a really long time."

The sale is scheduled to be completed in April, according to the Christian Science Monitor. The agreement with the private buyer of the Windstar property, whose identity has not been disclosed, will allow the institute to keep its offices on the site for two years, though it's probable the office in Basalt will not be completed by that time.