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All's Well

Landmark guesthouse to breathe anew

POTTERSVILLE · Standing on the sprawling porch of the Wells House, Paul Bubar has a clear view of cars speeding along the Northway 100 yards away.

An average of 16,000 cars a day on the interstate speed past the northern Warren County hamlet of Pottersville, according to the state Department of Transportation.

Bubar, 70, is banking his retirement on his ability to convince a few of those drivers to stop and spend the night at his hotel. After a four-decade career at Word of Life in a variety of management positions, he is embarking on a $500,000 to restore the Wells House hotel to its former grandeur.

The Wells House dominates the landscape at the intersection of Route 9 and county Route 19 in Pottersville, much as it has for a century and a half. In its heyday, the three-story inn with a broad, wraparound porch welcomed travelers on what became Route 9, then the main north-south road through the Adirondacks between Albany and Montreal.

Built in 1845, the inn was a model of luxury and comfort and served as a haven for road-weary travelers.

"They'd take the train to the railhead at Riverside," Bubar said, "Then they'd take a stagecoach 12 miles here, where they'd spend the night. Then they'd go on by coach up to (Schroon) Lake and take a steamship up the lake, where there were a dozen or so grand hotels."

In the last 50 years, the hotel has passed through a series of owners - the Barlettes, Brunos, Richard Smith, William Morrisey - the last of whom died six years ago in a motorcycle accident at the age of 50.

And now the Bubars.

Each owner left his mark on the hotel, resulting in a patchwork of style and decor.

The new owners say they hope to strip away the years and recreate the original style, woodwork, paint and trimmings.

"It's going to be a beautiful hotel," Shirley Bubar said. "Can you see it?"

Seeing the potential

It takes a visionary's eye to see what the Bubars see. The restoration task is complicated by the hotel's age and a leaky roof that together have worked to destroy much of what lies beneath the layers of drywall, wallpaper and ceiling tile.

The inn is a museum of sorts, an odd menagerie of remnants from previous owners that provides a timeline of its life:

• a stuffed moose head that has hung on the wall since 1912, if the notation tacked to the wall beneath it is to be believed;
• an ancient oak bar that's now for sale on eBay to make room for an office where the bar now sits;
• glass lamp covers with ornate flowers painted on them that date from the 1950s;
• floors in the second-level bathrooms that have been raised an inch and a half to allow space for pipes, an accomodation to the then-new invention of indoor plumbing.

When refurbished, the hotel will offer 10 guest rooms, a restaurant with a formal dining room and a meeting or conference room.

The Bubars say they are up for the task. Together they've renovated a half-dozen old homes, and they've each had stints in lodging management. So both say they feel this is the project for which they've been preparing a lifetime.

Centerpiece of a community

The inn, the dominant building in Pottersville, is symbolic of what has become of Pottersville in the last 50 years - bypassed by the Northway and looking a little forgotten.

The Bubars say they hope restoration of the inn will be a catalyst for invigorating the hamlet.

"Atmosphere determines growth or dormancy," Bubar said.

It's an attitude that is shared by officials of the town of Chester, within whose boundaries the hamlet sits. Two years ago, the town used a grant to have the firm Saratoga Associates study Pottersville's downtown.

"One thing that came out of the study was something we already knew," Chester Supervisor Fred Monroe said, "The Wells House is a very important fixture in Pottersville. It had fallen into disrepair. If it could be restored, it could be a catalyst for positive development throughout the hamlet."

When Monroe and the Town Board learned of Bubar's purchase of the hotel, they were delighted, Monroe said.

"We told him we'd help him to whatever extent we could," Monroe said.

Town leaders steered Bubar to the Adirondack Economic Development Corp. and the Warren County Economic Development Corp., where Bubar found information about federal Small Business Administration loans and other potential sources of funding to help with the renovation.

The Town Board asked the county to add The Wells House to the county's Empire Zone, something that happened late in 2003. The designation makes tax breaks and other benefits available to the Bubars as they push forward with the project.

In addition, the town plans to install decorative streetlights in the hamlet and to repair a picturesque stone wall that stretches along Route 19 west from the intersection of Route 9.

"This could be a very good thing for Pottersville," Monroe said of the Wells House project.

The Bubars have set an ambitious goal. They want to be open for business July 1.

Months of labor stand between them and achievement of their goal. Adding to the challenge, Bubar said, is the need to find additional funding sources. But he remains determined. "I'm a 49-year-old trapped in a 70-year-old body," Bubar said, "We're going to have some fun here. A lot of work but a lot of fun."