July 15, 2010
CINDY KIBBE
NEW HAMPSHIRE BUSINESS REVIEW
The historic Balsams Grand Resort Hotel, one of New Hampshire's most famous
resorts, is for sale.
Atlanta-based hotel brokerage and investment banking firm Hodges Ward Elliot
Inc. said Wednesday that it has been designated to represent the 203-room
historic hotel in Dixville Notch. No sale price was mentioned, but the
company said in a press release, “All reasonable offers for the resort will be
considered."
It said the hotel and its accompanying golf course and ski area represents "a
truly unique opportunity for an investor to own a trophy asset in the beautiful
Great North Woods region of northern New Hampshire at a significant discount to
replacement cost.”
The Neil and Louise Tillotson Charitable Trust owns the Balsams. Grafton
Corbett, president of Tillotson Corp., a diversified holding company based in
Lexington, Mass., which oversees the trust, told NHBR the company is expecting
to turn over all of the trust's assets to charity by the end of the year, and
the hotel was "one of the last pieces." But, he added, "we have not found a
charity that would like to run the hotel.”
Corbett said that, in its "present configuration, it’s a cash drain.” He
said Tillotson has been trying to find a “very wealthy buyer who would have his
vision for the hotel that would include basically modernizing it, but not the
atmosphere, and keep employment in the area.”
He said the resort’s price “will depend on the financial viability of the
buyer.” Most important, said Corbett, was the employment that the Balsams
provides the North Country. He said the resort employs between 60 and 360
workers depending on the season.
“The hotel is extraordinarily important to the North Country as an employer. If
it closed, it would be quite disastrous, and would take a long time to recover,”
he said.
The Balsams opened in its earliest form in the late 1860s. In the decades since,
many additions have been made. Today, the property includes a Donald Ross
championship golf course, a ski area, tennis facilities, several dining rooms
and a spa. It is also well known for being the site as the location where
residents of Dixville Notch every four years cast the first votes in the the
presidential elections