The newly reconstituted Black Point Inn opened last summer a hodgepodge assemblage of its former self. Its rose garden has been replaced by a heated swimming pool with a gorgeous ocean view, blank trellises adorning the adjacent patio signaling a future filled with roses yet to come.
What happened to the venerable old Black Point Inn, built in 1878 at the peak of America’s Gilded Age? After Eric Cianchette purchased the place in 1998, it wasn’t unusual for this three-kitchen facility to simultaneously host two 250-guest weddings. Add in a steady stream of corporate functions and the traffic down the five-mile winding country road off Route One in Scarborough became untenable.
Too much commotion for some tastes, at least: the new operation had pierced the quiet on the nearby tennis courts, yacht club, golf course and beach club. So in 2004, a group of 40 Prouts Neck neighbors banded together, apparently at their breaking point over what they saw as a perpetual three-ring circus over at the inn.
This collaborative of wealthy Prouts Neck summer folk had the means to solve their problem without rancor. They asked Cianchette simply to name his price for selling the property — and he did. By January of 2006 the inn was acquired by BPI Partners, LLC, described by its public relations firm as “an investor group with deep roots in the local community.”
The neighbor-owners slashed and cut with not a tinge of nostalgia. The property was swiftly divided into 14 lots, with the cottages converted to private property and the 84-room inn downsized to a 25-room hostelry set on a nine-acre lot. The wings were sliced off the main building. As the present management puts it, the inn was returned to its 1921 footprint.
“Because the neighbors are sensitive about delivery trucks,” explains the inn’s new chef, Cheryl Lewis, “arriving vendors must travel in Number Two Trucks (UPS size), and only after 8:00 a.m.”
The inn’s managing partners, Tim and Neil Porta, found themselves a tad unprepared when they opened. Under pressure by the investors, most of whom live within walking distance of the inn, when the place opened on June 15, the place was understaffed, decorated with leftovers and suffering from an identity crisis. By mid-July, Porta worried that already he and the BPI investors had gone $150,000 over budget in renovation costs — yet the carpeting in the entranceway was still tatty and many service jobs were still unfilled.
While truckloads of old furniture were donated to Habitat for Humanity, in decorating the remaining rooms, “we were able to keep the most interesting and meaningful pieces from the collection and use them in the new rooms,” explains Janice Porta.
While the new management wants to strip the inn of its former stuffiness, it wants to keep standards as high as the room rates (per person, based on double occupancy, from $190 to $280 through September 4th and from $150 to $230 through Jan. 1, when the property closes).
“It’s important that people know that we’re not a private club,” says Neil Porta. “And at the same time we need to return the place to its social season roots — I think some day this place could be a Relaix and Chateau property, competing with the White Barn Inn.”
Executive Chef Lewis, on the other hand, encourages people to just stop on by after a stroll on the nearby beach. “I want my hairdresser to feel comfortable here,” she laughs, warmly and sincerely. An award-winning chef with a longstanding reputation in Portland, she’s hoping to fill her newest restaurant with happy connoisseurs, especially through the fall.
“Now the Black Point Inn is a restaurant with rooms,” asserts Lewis, who is still “tweaking” her New American cuisine menu. “I like to prepare the classics with a twist, like Oysters Rockefeller, country-style veal pork pate and salted cod fritters.”
To accommodate old timers longing for the foods of their childhoods, Lewis does serve old-fashioned fare — she put Salmon Gravlax, sweet pea pancake and crème fraiche on the Chart Room menu after learning that dining on this dish remains one of Maine’s oldest 4th of July traditions.
Two restaurants welcome guests now. The Point remains a formal 110-seat dining room, serving guests breakfast and dinner (with entrees ranging from $18 to $32); and on an egalitarian note, as resident guests are no longer able to stake claim to the restaurant’s best spots, walk-in diners no longer find themselves stashed at leftover tables. Meanwhile, while the more casual Chart Room serves lunch from 11:30 to 2:00, but the real magic here happens from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. — that’s when the jazz pianist plays nightly, and the quality of the wine list competes with the ocean view, making the $14 burger and $18 lobster BLT taste like bargains.