At first, Ted Whetherill wasn’t sure what was happening when he saw the ambulance pull up in front of the Ocean House in Westerly earlier this month.
A stretcher carrying an old man was wheeled out the back of the vehicle. He gaped at the hotel. A family member snapped a photo of him and the hotel. After a few minutes, he was placed back in the ambulance, which then left.
“He wanted to see the Ocean House again,” recalled Whetherill, who is part of the staff overseeing construction at the hotel on behalf of the owner. “So they brought him here from his nursing home.”
The Ocean House long had been a sentimental landmark in the Watch Hill section of Westerly, overlooking East Beach and Block Island Sound for more than 130 years, a hotel where its guests returned summer after summer.
Now, after nearly a seven-year absence, the Ocean House is back. Sort of.
Workers are putting the finishing touches on the massive $140 million construction project that replicated the 1868 hotel, which was shuttered in 2003 and demolished on the same site in 2005.
The high-end hotel and condo complex will be ready for an unofficial opening on May 17, with a more formal opening planned for June 26. A fundraising event for local nonprofits is also scheduled in June.
Top-level managers have already been brought on, and as many as 160 hotel workers are in the process of being hired.
Interest in the oceanfront destination from potential guests has grown well ahead of the opening.
People have been calling to make reservations at the 49-room boutique hotel for more than a year, the owners have said. Room rates will start at $450 a night.
And the complex’s banquet spaces have been fully booked with weekend wedding receptions through October. “You simply can’t beat the location,” said Dinah Saglio, spokeswoman for the Ocean House, in explaining the popularity.
Meanwhile, Bluff Avenue LLC, which owns the development, has already obtained deposits or purchase-and-sales agreements on 10 of the 23 luxury condo units, which have asking prices ranging from $1.5 million to $6 million.
“It’s hard to sell [these condos] when it’s under construction,” Saglio said.
The project has proved popular with locals. That’s because the structure has been erected on the old hotel’s footprint, complete with clapboards, mansard roof, center tower and grand wraparound porch that is faithful to the original building. “Down to the inches,” Whetherill said.
Designers kept the same elevations and the same floor-to-ceiling height ratios. The result is that the main wing of the hotel looks almost exactly the same as the original from Bluff Avenue. The roof design now more closely resembles the hotel’s original roof, which was destroyed in the 1938 hurricane.
Much attention has been given to the details. Workers have rebuilt the granite and beach-stone fireplace that once graced the lobby of the original hotel. The Ocean House’s entrance doors have been restored and reused, and the hotel’s old elevator cab has been rebuilt, too, and installed in a modern elevator.
“The goal was to bring back a classic grand dame,” Whetherill said. “And that’s what they did.”
That’s not to say that the building is an exact replica.
Contractors installed 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 features a banquet room, fitness center, spa and lap pool. Some of those new amenities are housed in a residential wing that didn’t exist in the original structure.
The owners of the original Ocean House shuttered the historic hotel in 2003, unable to meet state fire code changes.
When the property was purchased by a developer with plans to build five homes on the site, local residents launched a protest campaign.
Eventually, several partners – led by Charles A. Royce – formed Bluff Avenue LLC and took control of the property.
When it was determined that the structure had been too weakened by previous renovations, Royce made the decision to raze and replicate it.
The development firm Peregrine Group was brought on as a partner in the project, and Dimeo Construction Co. was hired as a general contractor.
The owners’ desire to match the hotel’s historic appearances while providing modern amenities raised the complexity of the construction.
Because the new building maintains the same floor-to-ceiling height ratios, Whetherill said designers struggled to get heating and cooling ducts, sprinkler pipes and thick bundles of wiring into small areas.
While the exterior of the hotel looks the same, Whetherill said the bones of the new building couldn’t be more different.
The old wood-frame hotel has been replaced with a building made largely of noncombustible steel and concrete. “The fire chief couldn’t be happier,” Whetherill said. “Before, the hotel was a tinderbox.”
Also adding difficulty: the Watch Hill area is not connected to a municipal sewer, so workers installed an individual sewer system that Whetherill says may be the second largest in the state.
As many as 200 construction workers have been on-site at any one time.
“It’s been an intense project, with so many moving parts and so many players,” Whetherill said. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me,” he mused. “We’re not going to see something like this again.” •
