The porch sagged, rain dripped through the kitchen ceiling and the laundry room was in unsanitary proximity to the dish room. Spring water would flow through the basement bar, and the restaurant occasionally ran out of toast for breakfast. Furthermore, the whole place needed a whole lot of paint.
Nevertheless, Martha Dumont, of Cumberland saw lots of potential for the 21-room, waterfront Chebeague Island Inn – a property that first greeted guests in the 1920s and has been an island institution ever since.
So Dumont purchased the inn from the Bowden family last fall. Three days after the September 24 closing, she auctioned off the old furniture, donating the proceeds to the Island Commons eldercare program. Then a whirlwind of workers descended on the place – big blowers kept them warm in the dead of winter. The huge tent that had housed many an island wedding was torn down and donated to the recreation center. And as she poured more and more money into the place, Dumont acknowledged that her investment was a “not terribly cerebral decision to buy a building that was very old and required a tremendous amount of work – and then there are the logistics of doing anything on an island.”
Nevertheless, when the newly refurbished Chebeague Island Inn opens in a few days, the place will practically sparkle with fresh paint, updated bathrooms and charming room decor – not to mention a state-of-the art fire-alarm system and a very straight porch where guests can now sip fine wine while watching the sun set over Casco Bay. The newly refurbished Inn, with room rates ranging from $185 to $315, double occupancy, plans to offer hospitality, wonderful food and lots of Maine ambiance.
Martha Dumont, raised the daughter of the postmaster in Skowhegan, moved back to Maine from New York in 1997 to raise her children in the kind of community she remembers from her Maine childhood. In the years of working at Lehman Brothers, on Wall Street, she traveled extensively, frequently checking into some of the world’s finest hotels. Dumont remembers one place in particular that offers guests the kind of hospitality she aspires to create at the Chebeague Inn.
A new Provision Shop, selling wine, sandwiches and the Inn’s signature candle, will replace the Bounty Bar in the basement; a new 14-foot Avon 450 will ferry sandwich platters for eight out to boaters anchored nearby. Waiters will bring guests drinks fresh from a well-stocked lobby bar – one that discourages barflies simply by having no barstools. With a professional chef in the sandblasted-clean kitchen, toast at breakfast will always happen – along with eggs and pancakes, prepared with eggs ferried over fresh from Sparrow Farms. White linen tablecloths will grace the 70-seat dining room for lunch and dinner, and all laundering of these linens will now happen in a proper basement laundry room. And the newly redecorated rooms, five of which do not come with private bathrooms and may not have telephones or televisions, will surely be quite comfortable, but in a low-key luxury sort of way.
Dumont asked old friends Allan Fisher, and his wife, Andrea, to take over the jobs of chef and rooms manager; the couple moved up from Virginia last fall with their son, Lewis. The Fishers, both graduates of the Culinary Institute of America, boast resumes full of testimony to their agility in catering to the rich and famous. They, too, were in search of a lifestyle change when they moved to Maine.
“We want to be part of the community here on Chebeague – we’re not here to run a seasonal business,” says Allan Fisher. “We just fell in love with this place. It reminded us of one of those old Catskill hotels of the 1920s and 30s – Andrea and I first met each other at one of these hotels.”
(“Yes,” remembers Andrea. “It was sort of like the ‘Dirty Dancing’ situation, only we were both employees at different hotels.”)
The new Chebeague Inn hopes to succeed as “an inn with a fine restaurant” – when the tent came down it was a sign the days of huge wedding parties were over. “We’ve already turned down a few good-sized functions because they wanted to take over the inn,” explained Fisher.
Dumont’s three children will all work summer jobs at her new family business. Thomas, age 12, will carry bags to the rooms, while Sophie, at 15, is old enough to be bus girl. John, the oldest at 18, will drive the golf cart to greet guests at the ferry. Meanwhile, the Fishers’ son, Lewis, at 13, is old enough to prep every morning in the kitchen.
All jobs at the inn were initially opened to islanders. The clean-up crew included six Cheabeague teenagers who will become full-time staff on their summer vacation. The assistant manager, Polly Wentleling, a year-round islander who last summer served as a bartender in the old Bounty Bar, admits to being skeptical at first about the new owner of the Chebeague Inn. Then she met Martha Dumont at a Christmas party last winter, and came to think of her new boss as “family.”
Sure, Wentleling admits that many islanders will miss the Bounty Bar, which she describes as “the kind of place where summer people mixed with island people, where a fisherman could meet a millionaire.”