In a growing number of areas in the tiny, historic town of Aspen, CO, it feels a lot like an empty movie set. The lights are on, but in many cases, well, nobody's home.

That's not just a cheap shot, but what local Joanne Ditmer would consider fair criticism of county planners who've allowed parts of Aspen to resemble a ghost town most of the year.

Of the nearly 6,000 homes in and around Aspen, more than half of them are luxury vacation McMansions occupied less than three months out of the year, typically during high snow season.

Ditmer is a preservationist awarded by Colorado Preservation Inc. as a pioneer in saving historic buildings.

Also an environmental and urban issues columnist for the Denver Post since 1962, Ditmer says, while the empty vacation retreats certainly threaten the fabric of Aspen's historic, small-town way of life, there's a more global problem to consider.

Aspen's Sopris Foundation says one sprawling vacation home emits more than four times the level of carbon dioxide per day from a full-time home. The vacation homes, says the foundation, are responsible for more than 60 percent Aspen's total residential carbon footprint.

That's because, in many of the newer, often-vacant luxury crash pads, not only are the lights really on around the clock when nobody's home, the homes also come with heated driveways and roofs to melt the snow, heated swimming pools, heated towel rods and heated hot tubs --- not to mention the heated expanse of square footage.

Aspen's vacation homes are a prime example of the kind of residential real estate over-indulgence recently described in Daniel McGinn's "House Lust: America's Obsession With Our Homes" (Random House, $24.95).

Among them is the nation's most expensive, perhaps most infamous residential listing, Saudi Arabia Prince Bandar's 56,000 square foot, 96 acre estate, currently listed for a cool $135 million.

Part-time Aspen residents also include: Victoria Beckham ("Posh Spice"), Kevin Costner, Felicity Huffman and Jack Nicholson.

Granted, most of the homes are a mere 10,000 square feet or less, but there's more -- the Sopris Foundation says the county's master plan is only 40 percent built out.

With a remaining 60 percent yet to come in the urban core, Aspen may be just getting started as a more than mile-high vacation home playground for the rich and famous.

"With 60 percent more growth, would anything be left of Aspen, and the Roaring Fork Valley, that is unique and splendid?" laments a saddened Ditmer in a recent column.

Published: January 31, 2008

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.