By Katherine Clarke

Frederic "Rick" Bourke, the co-founder of the Dooney & Bourke accessories brand, is putting his Robert A.M. Stern-designed home in Aspen, Colo., on the market for $70 million.

Completed around 1993, the roughly 11,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom house is built horizontally along a rock face on Red Mountain, with tawny-beige stucco walls set atop a native sandstone base.

Bourke, 79, said he met Stern around 1970, when Bourke became one of the architect's early clients, hiring him to design a poolhouse at a home he owned in Greenwich, Conn. At the time, Bourke said, he never anticipated how well-known Stern would become. "He was young and dynamic," he said.

Stern, one of the most recognizable names in architecture, died last year at age 86.

Bourke acquired the roughly 3.5-acre Aspen property in the late 1980s. The lot sits high on Red Mountain, about 800 feet above downtown. He asked Stern to design a family home there.

Bourke's neighbor in Aspen was businessman Viktor Kozeny. In 2009, Bourke was convicted of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for engaging in a scheme with Kozeny to bribe Azerbaijan government officials. Bourke spent almost a year in prison starting in 2013.

Bourke said he "learned a lot" from the experience; "I went into prison as I think a good person and came out a better person." Kozeny's former Aspen home sold for $40 million in 2022 to Wes Rogers, who heads a company that develops student housing. Kozeny couldn't be reached for comment.

In addition to founding Dooney & Bourke, Bourke is also the founder of the cancer research company Immunolight. For years he and his wife, former ski-racer Megan Bourke, have been splitting their time between Aspen and Maine, where Stern designed a home for them in Seal Harbor. But after a bad bout of Covid-19 a few years ago, Rick said, he now struggles with the elevation in Aspen.

"It's a wonderful house," he said. "If I could pick it up and move it somewhere, I wouldn't sell it."

The Bourkes said they are considering spending winters in Hawaii, where there are no native land snakes; Rick has a fear of snakes. They recently came close to renting a house in Malibu, Calif., but aborted the plan after a real-estate agent warned them to watch for rattlesnakes while walking their dog. "We ripped up the lease then and there," Rick said.

Listing agent Emery Holton of Douglas Elliman said Stern's passing didn't impact the timing of the Aspen listing, but that it ultimately may drive up the value of the property.

"It's sort of like art, when an artist dies," she said. "There's now a finite amount of their work left, and how much does it mean to you to own a piece of it?"

She said some buyers might look to update or modernize the house, but noted that Pitkin County's current building restrictions wouldn't allow a residence of this size to be built today.

In late 2025, Palantir CEO Alex Karp purchased a 3,700-acre former property near Aspen for $120 million, setting a county record.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 13, 2026 02:32 ET (06:32 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.