Historic resort’s renovation could be boon to Bedford County
February 4th, 2007 - Category: Real Estate, ResortFor years, Bill Defibaugh has been squirreling away the best of Bedford Springs Resort.
At auctions and sales, he bought guest ledgers, photographs and corner cupboards. He gathered wooden chests, grandfather clocks, stoves and glass bottles until he filled his homes with treasures from Bedford County’s aging grande dame.
Some pieces were valuable 18th-century antiques; others were basic tools of the hotel trade. But it all has historic significance to Defibaugh, whose family has been involved in the resort since Dr. John Anderson bought the land in 1796.
“I was nuts for Bedford Springs,” said Defibaugh, an architect and historian. “I was able to acquire a lot of history. It’s all going back in.”
Sleeping beauty
Shuttered for more than two decades, Bedford Springs Resort will reopen this summer — refreshed and restored to its former grandeur and beyond — upon completion of a $108 million historic renovation and expansion.
The 216-room luxury resort nestled in the southern Allegheny Mountains will feature a modern conference center, elegant ballrooms, a golf course, indoor and outdoor pools, and restaurants offering everything from casual fare to gourmet dining. There will be gold medal fly fishing in Shobers Run creek and nearby streams, carriage rides, tennis and trails for biking and hiking.
But the prime attraction will be the 30,000-square-foot Springs Eternal Spa, fed by Sweet Spring, one of seven natural mineral springs flowing at the resort. Legends of the springs’ curative powers have been handed down for generations, from Native Americans to the first European settlers to the present day.
Renovation of the resort, owned by Bedford Resort Partners Ltd. and managed by Benchmark Hospitality International, is being accomplished through a combination of private enterprise and public money. Bette Slayton, president and chief executive officer of the Bedford County Development Association, said the effect on the county, region and state “is going to be huge.”
The resort, which created about 300 jobs related to the construction, is expected to create more than 200 permanent positions, from management to entry level, indoors and outdoors. Slayton said the area also will benefit from an untold number of indirect jobs and revenue generated in businesses and farms that will supply the resort.
“We don’t have a big marketing budget in Bedford County. The resort will help us in name recognition alone. They’re going to be a huge recruitment partner and will help local businesses in retention efforts,” Slayton said.
“Once people come to Bedford County, they love it, especially when they walk through the downtown and see the historic district.”
Glory days
Attention to historic detail is critical to the renovation, according to Todd Gillespie, director of sales and marketing for the resort.
“Six months ago, this place was dilapidated. When it is finished, it will be a total historic renovation,” Gillespie said.
Defibaugh, founder of the Bedford Springs Historical Society, is the resort’s historian.
His great-great-grandfather hauled stones when the hotel was built, and other ancestors worked there as blacksmiths and woodchoppers. And now, he’s working with the interior designers on placement of furniture and artifacts, including pieces from his private collection that he sold back to the resort at cost.
Photos and ledgers will be used for research, Defibaugh said, adding that the historical society will have an office on the property.
“If you look at the ledgers, you see the names of presidents. And when you walk into the place, it gives you a sense of history,” he said.
In 1804, eight years after he bought the property, Anderson opened the 24-room Bedford Springs Hotel, where Aaron Burr and his grandson were among the first guests. Anderson used the therapeutic waters of the mineral springs to market the hotel to the social elite, and, by 1842, the hotel had achieved luxury-resort status.
Bedford Springs was used as the summer residence for Pennsylvania’s only president, James Buchanan, who was an annual guest for 25 years and received the first-ever transatlantic cable, sent from Queen Victoria, in the hotel lobby.
Presidents Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, James K. Polk and Zachary Taylor, as well as notables such as Daniel Webster and Henry Clay, were among registered guests in the 1800s.
The U.S. Supreme Court met there in 1855 for informal deliberations in the landmark Dred Scott case before justices returned to Washington, D.C., to announce their ruling. Their decision that people of African descent could not be citizens — a factor that contributed to the start of the Civil War — was overturned.
During World War II, the hotel was commandeered for use as a Navy communication center from 1941-43. For two years after that, it served as a place of internment for Japanese diplomats.
Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan — although not while the latter was in office — were among the guests who visited the hotel between 1950 and the early 1980s.
But by 1984, when Bedford Springs was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the once-grand hotel had slipped into decline. According to promotional information for the renovation project, “deferred maintenance, poor management and eventual foreclosures” forced the resort to close in 1986.
In 1991, the U.S. Department of Interior designated the empty resort as a National Historic Landmark. The next year, it was labeled one of the most endangered sites on the National Register of Historic Places.
Preservationists worried that it would cease to exist.
In fact, the Harrisburg-based group Preservation Pennsylvania placed Bedford Springs on its first “at risk” list in 1992. The list identifies historic properties that are endangered for various reasons, including neglect.
“For many years, we all expected it was just a matter of time before it was lost,” executive director Melinda Higgins said. “When this proposal came forward, we were really excited. It would have been a shame to lose it.”
Massive restoration
Bedford Springs Resort is coming back, Gillespie said. During a January tour, he said staff will begin taking guest reservations online in March.
Room rates have not been released, Gillespie said. However, he said prices will be comparable to those at other luxury resorts in the region, such as Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in Fayette County and The Greenbrier in southern West Virginia
“These crews move very quickly,” Gillespie said. “We have a ways to go, but we’ll be open this summer, and then we’ll be open for another 200 years.”
At a given time, some 200 workers scurry about the construction site at Bedford Springs, where the resort’s guest rooms and public areas were little more than empty shells in January.
Electricians, painters, masons, drywall finishers and carpenters pulled wire, painted walls, cut marble for bathroom tiles and sawed white trim for door frames and woodwork in the empty guest rooms.
The spa was bare; the ballrooms, kitchens, restaurants and lobby areas were gutted. Large heaters pumped hot air through cold hallways to dry plaster, and workers raked piles of stones into forms at the indoor swimming pool. Outside, men in hard hats took advantage of winter sunshine to work on the roof, outdoor pool and driveway.
When the construction is done, designers, stylists and resort staff will furnish the rooms, outfit the kitchens and restaurants, and ready the ballroom and lobby. Landscapers will plant flowers and shrubs; groundskeepers will manicure the renovated golf course created by Spencer Oldham in 1895, and updated by A.W. Tillinghast in 1912 and Donald Ross in 1923.
The Sweet Spring, diverted temporarily during construction, will be re-routed back into the spa, which will offer hydrotherapy baths, skin-care treatments and a full-service hair and nail salon.
Gillespie, who promised it will come together in time to become a “world class, full-service, destination resort,” talks about it as though he can see it.
The Greek Revival-style Colonial House built around 1824 is marked by a grand portico and thick white columns at the center of the resort. Gillespie said that area, the Colonnades, will serve as a lobby to welcome guests on the lower floor, with a ballroom upstairs.
Guests will check in at a front desk between the Colonnades and the Evitt House section, built in 1855. Halls throughout the resort will be decorated with historic photos and showcases filled with old ledgers and other items from Defibaugh’s collection.
Guest rooms, painted and decorated true to the history of their construction period, will be upstairs in Evitt House, and in the Stone Inn, Swiss Cottage and Anderson House sections of the resort. The spa building, which is new construction, will house additional suites and guest rooms.
Gillespie said there will be rocking chairs on porches outside guest rooms, lush flowers surrounding the driveway, concierge service, retail shops, state-of-the-art flat-screen televisions and wireless Internet connections.
Talk of the town
Throughout Bedford County, there is much discussion about Bedford Springs among locals who remember the way it used to be.
Oralee Zumbro found Bedford — and the resort — when she got caught in a snowstorm on the Pennsylvania Turnpike back in the 1970s. She said she kept coming back “to this delightful town and wonderful area,” and in 1981, she bought Bedford Springs.
“I met some wonderful people there, and I still think about them,” she said.
Zumbro sold the resort in 1986, just before it was closed. Although she runs the 12-room Golden Eagle Inn in Bedford, she’ll take a night off when Bedford Springs reopens.
“We can hardly wait for them to finish the work,” she said. “I already have my room picked out — one of the suites overlooking the golf course.”
Ned Freer, retired editor of the Bedford Gazette newspaper, wrote a book about the resort, which he calls “a major part of Bedford.” He characterized the project as a “political football” for a time, as development and funding proposals were considered for many years.
But now, the community seems receptive to the project, he said.
“That hotel has defined Bedford all through the years. People who have grown up here are, at heart, fond of Bedford Springs and want it back.”
Source: www.pittsburghlive.com
