Before the former Ocean House in Watch Hill was demolished, the development team that plans to rebuild it as a high-end hotel and condominium development picked through the interior, harvesting trim boards, lighting fixtures, the original front desk and the oversized fireplace, which was taken apart stone by stone.
“We took a warehouse full of things and documented them,” said Colin P. Kane, principal of Peregrine Group LLC. “And when it’s time, those things will go back into the building, either as faithful reproductions or the original materials.”
Those 5,000 items are cataloged – there are about 300 pages of inventory – and are waiting patiently in a Pawcatuck, Conn., warehouse. Donna Simmons, spokesman for Bluff Avenue LLC, which owns the development, said those items are a way “to try to replicate it, to the extent possible, and bring back the spirit and feeling and meaningful aspects of this property.”
And the Westerly property has a meaningful history in the Watch Hill neighborhood. It was one of the five “grand hotels” frequented by well-to-do families during the early 1900s, according to Bluff Avenue. The 120,000-square-foot Ocean House had operated in the Watch Hill village for more than 130 years before it closed its doors in 2003 because it could no longer be kept up to fire codes. The rebuilding project is expected to be completed in May 2010.
Kane, whose firm is managing the development team that includes Centerbrook Architects, based in Centerbrook, Conn., and Newport Harbor Corporation, said construction is on track. The concrete foundation has been completed and steelwork is expected to begin this month. Earlier this month, Providence-based Goedecke, Doyle & Company announced that it has secured $70 million in construction financing.
“In a financing market that was feeling the repercussions of the subprime debacle, we had a lot of lenders that had showed initial interest but backed out,” said partner Alan Doyle.
The project, expected to cost more than $100 million, will combine a high-end hotel (with a daily room rate of $450) with luxury residential condominiums, “both of which are not in high demand by lenders,” Doyle explained. “In good times, people like hotels. In bad times they don’t like lending on hotels unless there’s a lot of cash equity in the deal.”
Yet despite the obstacles, including more stringent lending requirements, financing was found because the developers had what lenders wanted to see, approximately $30 million in cash equity in the project, Doyle said.
His firm, founded during 2002, is an affiliate of Goedecke & Co. LLC, founded in Boston in 1998. The company has, since 1999, financed transactions of more than $3.6 billion and has a portfolio of loans that exceeds $850 million.
The 24 condominium units planned for the Ocean House will also be high-end residences, with prices of about $2,000 per square foot, Doyle said. Simmons said those condos will range in price from $1.49 million for a studio to more than $6 million for the “Tower Suite,” with penthouse views.
Simmons said marketing has started and there’s been interest locally and as far away as California.
“We’re actually very pleased right now with where we are,” she said. “Usually a property doesn’t see a lot of activity until it is actually coming out of the ground.”
Much of the marketing will focus on a 150-mile radius around the hotel. “The population is so huge in that radius – there are about 32 million people – so what makes the Ocean House such a wonderful location is that it could end up being a weekend and vacation home for some people,” Simmons said. •
