For decades visitors to Block Island have stepped off the ferry and headed to Ballard’s Inn, a beach-front restaurant just steps from the dock. With just six hotel rooms, Ballard’s Inn has become more restaurant and bar than inn. As a result, every summer thousands of young people head there for a cocktail under the sun.
But now the inn’s long-time owners want to change that and target families that come with larger wallets, spend more and cause less ruckus than a fraternity reunion. To draw those families, Ballard’s wants to raze the existing two-story building and replace it with a four-story structure featuring a restaurant, a 42-room hotel and a 100-seat function room.
If built, Ballard’s would become one of the largest hotels on the island and, if its owners are correct, increase the number of island visitors and help other businesses. The project would also restore Ballard’s to the larger and busier inn it was before a fire destroyed a prior building in 1987.
“Throughout my entire life, even in college, even in grad school, I always had a vision for this piece of real estate – to bring it back to what it was,” Ballard’s President Steve Filippi said, whose family has owned the hotel for decades.
While a lifelong dream, plans only started forming in 2007, shortly before the economy crashed. Economists cautioned that tourism could fall, but the Filippi family decided to keep moving ahead with the project.
“If anything, the project is more feasible because [the cost of] steel, wood, labor, everything is down from two years ago,” Steve Filippi said.
Filippi declined to say how much the project would cost, but acknowledged that credit markets have tightened in the past few months. He said his project, however, has found financial backing because the existing business demonstrates the potential of a new facility.
Overall, Filippi expects the same number of people – about 3,000 on a busy summer weekend – to pass through the hotel. But, if all goes according to plan, the demographics will change. Families, staying multiple nights, will fill the hotel rooms, soak up the sun on the beach outside and stop by the retail store on the first floor. In the top-floor function room, people attending wedding parties and conferences will munch on Ballard’s food while enjoying sweeping views of the Atlantic Ocean and a cash bar nearby. Then, Filippi hopes, they will head downstairs to the bar and dance the night away before returning to their hotel rooms upstairs.
The hotel also may stay open longer, possibly as long as nine months, Filippi said.
But the family is a long way from breaking ground. The proposal must clear a number of local boards and commissions that will have say over everything from the hotel’s exterior design to parking requirements. The family is also fighting a citizenry that shudders at the prospect of change and generally opposes development.
“I think more on Block Island than in Providence … it’s more of a PR perspective,” Filippi said. “My job is to convey to the community that everyone wins by this project, because just the word ‘development’ people don’t like on Block Island.”
The family hired an island architect to design the plans for the hotel after locals called its first proposal unsightly for the historic downtown area. A team of architects, lawyers and family members have traveled, plans in tow, to various town boards asking for their opinion. In September, the project will come before the Block Island Planning Board and the Historic District Commission. It also will likely need approval from the Town Council.
The Filippi family hopes to secure all the required approvals by the end of the year and break ground as early as September 2010, though September 2011 is looking more likely, Filippi said. The family estimates it can tear down the existing structure and build the new one during the winter using a system of pre-built panels ferried in from the mainland. •
