Longtime Aspen Golf Director Steve Aitken is calling it a career — at least locally.
Aitken is retiring from his role with the city effective March 23 to relocate and be closer to his family, closing his near 30-year tenure heading Aspen’s municipal golf projects and leaving a legacy of buildup behind.
“He really turned that golf course into a world-class facility,” Aspen Parks and Recreation Director Austin Weiss said. “The thing that strikes me about Steve is his overall passion for not just golf, but more specifically, working with people to provide the best golf experience that he could.”
Aitken originally joined the city of Aspen in 1993, taking on the role of golf director roughly a year later.
His first project, he recalled on Tuesday, was moving a couple of fairway bunkers. It was successful — maybe too much — setting lofty expectations for the new boss.
“Everybody came to me and said, ‘What next?’” Aitken remembered. “I was like, ‘Listen, I am not a golf architect.’”
So, he got one: native Coloradoan Dick Phelps, who would be inducted into the state’s golf hall of fame in 1998.
With his architect in hand, Aspen Golf developed a master plan, which Aitken estimates is about 85% completed today. Along the way, the course was transformed.
Water features were added, as was a new irrigation system that helped pave the way for the course to gain Audubon International certification for environmental awareness. Aitken showed his savvy by capitalizing on soil that needed disposing from a housing development project in Burlingame, allowing the city to execute a renovation that allowed for natural areas along the course.
“We were able to create shape and basically a new golf course with all that earth,” Aitken said.
His accomplishments are bountiful but, in his eyes, none are more impactful than the creation of the Aspen Golf Club in 1999, centralizing the clubhouse to a more convenient location near the driving range.
Under Aitken’s eye, the course underwent physical change but also managerial. It grew its public role by adding tennis courts and integrating Nordic skiing operations.
“It’s a completely unique situation,” Weiss said. “He did a great job. It’s a lot to ask of someone.”
As a man with a turfgrass management degree from Michigan State, however, It came down to the soil for Aitken.
“It’s my first love: creating surfaces that people really appreciate,” he said.
He took his degree, at a time when the U.S. was opening a new golf course every day, and knew he wanted to move to Colorado. He started with an internship in Vail, then Country Club of the Rockies. He met his future wife and followed her to Denver, working at Castle Pines Golf Club, eventually finding his way to the Roaring Fork Valley and Aspen.
The couple has two daughters, the youngest of which is now 23. With his kids gone, he wants to be closer to his mother on the Front Range and will be moving to Broomfield. He’s also going back to his turfgrass roots and plans to work as an agronomist consultant, helping properties ensure their landscapes are sustainable.
Weiss will assume the role of interim golf director until a new hire is found. He said the city will be looking for someone who can balance the community relations and service with the operational talent and ability to function within a municipal government that Aitken brought to the job, along with his passion.
While it’ll be the new hire’s course to manage, Aspen Golf Club got to where it is today thanks to nearly 30 years of work from Aitken, who will remember his time not only for the work he did, but also for the opportunities it afforded himself and his family.
“It was a great little golf course, but we just basically took it to the level of current standards for golf and being able to really provide a product that is exceptional both for passholders and guest runs,” Aitken said.
“It’s a real blessing. When I took this job, my oldest daughter was a year old. She just turned 30 and my other daughter’s 23. I’m so proud that I was able to bring them up here and have them have their childhood experiences in this valley.”
rich@aspendailynews.com
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