There’s a New Menace Stalking Suburbia. Meet the McBasement.

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When Sterling McDavid’s parents bought a roughly 9,000-square-foot home on Aspen’s Red Mountain, the 33-year-old interior designer directed the architect and contractors to start digging.

L?imited by zoning above ground, Ms. McDavid, who led the renovation, envisioned an expansive basement with a world-class gym, guest suites and hotel-caliber spa for her parents, former college track star Stacie McDavid, and David McDavid, a former owner of the Dallas Mavericks and car-dealership mogul.

“I love a basement,” says Ms. McDavid, who ultimately blew out her parents’ basement to more than double its size. “When you walk into a home, if all the magic is just within the first few steps, that’s no fun.”

Wealthy Londoners have long built basements reaching two, three, and even four stories below ground. Now, there is a cellars market in the U.S. among property owners facing restrictions on mansion sizes above ground. The McBasements of today have bars, bowling alleys, pools, climbing walls and whiskey-tasting rooms. To sidestep subterranean gloom, builders usher in natural light via grand staircases or skylights cut into the ground above.

“Down is the new up,” says Randy Correll, partner at Robert A.M. Stern Architects, who designs basements with luxe finishes. “Twenty years ago, basements were the ‘B word.’”

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Ms. McDavid says the excavation for her parent’s 4,000-square-foot Aspen basement added about a year to the three-year renovation, since workers dug underneath the home and into a mountainside. The resulting basement has guest suites, a gym with white oak floors, a 12-person hot tub and an “absurdly large” steam room, she says. “You feel like you’re in a luxury cave.”

She says the prior owner, by contrast, had done little to maximize the basement, which was “absolutely heinous.” (“It had wine storage, not to be confused with a wine cellar,” she says.)

Still, some towns have cracked down on the chic crypts, worried about unsettling topography and having truckloads of excavated dirt roll through residential streets. In Aspen, a resident sued the city for permitting a neighbor’s two-story basement, alleging excessive noise and dust. Aspen now limits basements to one level. And the Beverly Hills Planning Commission is now mired in a down-and-dirty basement brouhaha.

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