BAR HARBOR, Maine — A local hotelier has added yet another lodging property, and three others in New England, to his portfolio.
David J. Witham, who owns nine other hotels or motels in Bar Harbor, this week purchased the Bar Harbor Motel from the family of Richard V. Collier for an undisclosed sum. Witham indicated in emails Tuesday that he also recently bought two other Comfort Inns, one in South Portland and another in Danvers, Mass., and a Hampton Inn in Saco. He declined to indicate the purchase prices for any of the properties.
The Bar Harbor Motel consists of 86 rooms in several buildings spread out over 14 acres, according to information posted on the motel’s official website. The current assessed value of the property is $4.2 million, according to the town’s official assessing database.
Witham said Tuesday in an email that he has long admired the property, which he thinks has a good location on Route 3, near other hotels and Witham properties and within walking distance of the local downtown village.
“Most of all it is a way to develop long-term relationships with young family members who will be the future of Bar Harbor tourism,” Witham wrote.
Witham indicated his only planned change for the property is to replace the double beds with queen-sized beds. The motel will open as usual in the spring for the 2012 summer tourist season, he indicated.
The purchase is the latest by Witham in a shopping and building spree in Hancock County that dates to 2008, when the Witham Family Partnership bought from the Cough family the Atlantic Oakes Hotel on Route 3, across the street from the Bar Harbor Motel. He renamed that property the Atlantic Oceanside Hotel and Conference Center.
At the time, Witham also owned the Bar Harbor Inn overlooking the local harbor, the Grand Hotel on Main Street, and the Acadia Inn, also on Route 3. Witham bought the 125-year-old Bar Harbor Inn in 1987 and built the Acadia Inn in 1995 and the Grand Hotel in 2003.
Since buying the Atlantic Oceanside Hotel, Witham also has purchased the Villager Motel on Main Street, the Rockhurst Motel on Mount Desert Street, Aurora Inn on Holland Avenue, the Quality Inn on Kebo Street, and Best Western Acadia Park Inn on Route 3 in Salisbury Cove, all of which are in Bar Harbor.
Also since 2008, Witham has purchased majority stakes in the Ramada Inn, the Hampton Inn, and the Comfort Inn, all in Ellsworth, and the Knights Inn across the Ellsworth city line on Route 1 in Hancock.
Witham suggested that his buying spree may be over, at least for the foreseeable future. Members of the family partnership, he wrote Tuesday in an email, “are going to sit down next fall and evaluate just where we are and where should we be going.”
The total number of rooms in all of Witham’s hotel properties in Hancock County is more than 1,000. The cumulative assessed values for all those properties is estimated to be more than $50 million.
