With beach season approaching, Donna Simmons has been receiving calls two or three times a day from people asking to reserve a room at the Ocean House in Westerly.
Simmons, a marketing consultant for the hotel, also has been fielding dozens of inquiries from would-be brides looking to have their wedding reception at the oceanfront spot.
“We’ve been overwhelmed with how popular it’s been,” Simmons said. “I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. There’s not that many seaside locations like this.”
The surprise, however, is that interest in the Ocean House is pouring in even though the hotel, its 49 rooms and its 22 condominiums suites are still a year away from completion.
If anything, the ringing phones and inquiries appear to be easing, at least a bit, concerns that the developers might have had about sinking $130 million into the hotel and condo construction project as a global economy slogs through the depths of a recession.
“We were more nervous in September and November when we began seeing the financial meltdown,” says Simmons. “But now we know more and our sense is that it’s going to bounce back.”
Indeed, Bluff Avenue LLC, which owns the development, has already obtained deposits or purchase-and-sales agreements on eight of the 22 condo units, which have asking prices ranging from $1.5 million to $6 million.
“We’re actually doing a little better than we projected where we’d be at this time,” Simmons says.
Colin Kane, a principal at the Peregrine Group and partner in the project, says the economy has done little to slow the complex construction project, which has attracted much attention for its scope and its effort to replicate the historic 1868 hotel that was demolished on the same site in 2005.
A new foundation was laid last year by Dimeo Construction Co., the start of the project’s two-year timetable. Since then, as many as 120 construction workers have been on-site at any one time.
Now the structure – complete with clapboards, mansard roof, center tower and grand wraparound porch – has been erected on the old hotel’s footprint, overlooking East Beach and Block Island Sound.
But there are many differences between old and new, including the installation of heating and cooling systems, which the old building never had. And many hotel rooms and the condos will have gas fireplaces and outside decks with sweeping water views.
The new 120,500-square-foot building will also feature a banquet room, fitness center, spa and lap pool. Some of those new amenities will be housed in a residential wing that didn’t exist in the original structure.
Earlier this month, tradesmen buzzed around the unfinished interior of the hotel and condo wing, hanging drywall on metal studs and snaking thick bundles of wiring into ceilings.
Despite the dusty construction site, it was already clear the project is aimed at attracting a high-end clientele.
One of the condos that already has been sold includes a large rooftop deck with unobstructed views of the water and the miles of Rhode Island coastline. Also on the deck: a domed, three-season gazebo and an outdoor kitchen area.
Another condo – which has not sold yet – occupies four levels of the hotel’s center tower and includes a dizzying 60-foot-high atrium and a stairway to a widow’s walk.
All this opulence is quite a change from the original Ocean House’s feel, with its smaller rooms that were retrofitted with bathrooms some time after it was built.
Unable to meet state fire code changes, the owners of the Ocean House shuttered the historic hotel in 2003, and the property was purchased by a developer with plans to build five homes on the site.
Following a “Save the Ocean House” campaign by local residents, several partners – led by Charles A. Royce – formed Bluff Avenue LLC, took control of the property and launched feasibility studies to see whether the building could be saved.
In the end, it was determined that the structure had been weakened by previous renovations, and the costs to bring it up to standard were too high. Royce made the decision to raze and replicate it.
Grant Simmons, a project partner and husband of Donna Simmons, said the plans gained approvals from a local historic commission and the town planning board.
Designers kept the same elevations and the same floor-to-ceiling height ratios. The result is that the main wing of the hotel will look almost exactly the same as the original from Bluff Avenue – except for one thing.
Grant Simmons said the roof design now more closely resembles the hotel’s original roof, which was destroyed in the 1938 hurricane.
Locals “are pretty excited about what they’ve seen so far,” Simmons said.
And local merchants – particularly those along Watch Hill’s Bay Street – are eager to see Ocean House open again. Tourists who will stay at the hotel – it was previously reported that the daily room rate could be $450 a day, although Simmons wouldn’t confirm it – will typically have more disposable income than other beachgoers.
The developers note other fiscal benefits: Donna Simmons says the hotel will generate about $857,000 in annual property tax revenue for the town of Westerly. And unlike the old hotel, the new Ocean House is expected to remain open year-round, employing as many as 100 people.
With the economy sputtering badly, the hotel owners aren’t fretting about having to sit on the sidelines for another beach season.
Still, they insist that a beach-resort boutique hotel such as the Ocean House would likely do well in most economic conditions, in part, because the market is underserved in New England.
The hotel is sure to be a big draw for weddings. Simmons says the hotel is expecting to hold 50 to 60 weddings year, in a main banquet hall, a smaller room, or a tent area on the lawn.
Simmons said she’s penciled in dates for 42 bridal parties already.
Marketers are planning a campaign to emphasize the hotel as the “perfect train-ride destination” for executive meetings.
“I’m not sure there will be another historic replication of this quality anytime in the near future,” Donna Simmons said. •
