CAMDEN — Bay View Street Garage, built in 1910, is undergoing an extreme makeover as it is turned into a four-story, 22-room hotel. Construction began this past winter with the installation of a new elevator, and now contractors are going full tilt, erecting interior framing, replacing windows and getting ready to build outdoor balconies. 

The old brick walls of 16 Bay View Street have seen much history and excitement. It originally housed one of the first car dealerships in the area. You can see that in the construction, with sturdy iron trusses holding the structure tightly together. While the garage was on the ground levels, overhead was a large open space where the fraternal order of Knights of Pythias are said to have gathered.

More recently, avant garde and independent films screened upstairs in what was the Bay View Street Cinema. Downstairs, in the basement bar, much alcohol splashed around, with occasional fisticuffs spilling onto the waterfront parking lot. 

But that has changed, and the 12,000 square-foot space will become more refined, with hotel guests anticipated to visit year-round.

The hotel is the latest project of Camden residents Stuart and Marianne Smith, except this time, their son, Tyler, is the one at the helm. He has returned to his hometown of Camden after living in Washington state, where he worked for Boeing, Inc. With a background in mechanical engineering, he has now fallen into the family business, which includes real estate development, and is loving it. The 16 Bay View Street business effort is officially named Old Garage LLC.

While Tyler has the Bay View Street Hotel renovation in progress, he and his father have also taken on purchasing and redoing 2 Bay View Street, the oddly shaped white building near the corner of Route 1 and across from Camden National Bank and Cappy’s Restaurant. That is a project that will also result in lodging quarters, though weekly and longer. The storefront there will be retail space for Swans Island, makers of blankets and other woven products.

The Smiths acquired 16 Bay View Street in 2008. Until last year, the building was most well known for being home to Peter Ott’s Restaurant. On the corner of Bay View Street and Bay View Wharf — all owned by the Smiths — the solid and imposing building sits on a quarter-acre lot is currently assessed by the town at approximately $1 million.

The Smiths are investing approximately $850,000 into the hotel makeover, and represents heir second hotel project in Camden. The first was completed in the 1980s when Stuart and Marianne bought 26 Main Street and turned that large brick complex into the Lord Camden Inn.

But it was not Stuart’s first Camden business, according to Tyler. That, actually, was in the 1970s, when Stuart established Crow’s Nest Crafts Shop, above Cappy’s. He put that enterprise in motion and then went off to college. To keep shop while he was away, he recruited his father, who at that time had been enjoying retirement in Camden.

When Stuart returned to Camden, he set up the first shop for Maine Sport in the bottom of 2 Bay View Street, now home to Small Wonder Gallery. As he told the Camden Select Board several weeks ago, he was coming full circle almost 40 years later with the acquisition of that curved white building.

16 Bay View

Late last fall, after completing renovations in Rockland at the former Amalfi’s Restaurant into what is now the Rockland arm of the Penobscot Bay YMCA, Tyler and Stuart turned their attention back to Camden. While the Smiths also have plans for constructing a new hotel on the Rockland waterfront, the 16 Bay View Street address is appropriating their full attention right now. If you want to find Stuart or Tyler, they are likely working at the Camden site from 6:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The hotel may be called simply Bay View Hotel, though the name has yet to be ultimately determined.

As contractors work inside 16 Bay View Street, they are unearthing decorative cast iron rosette bolt heads and original brick columns. Concrete posts and cast iron trusses are getting exposed for the first time in decades, and the old wooden floors are being sanded and stained. The Bay View Street hotel project has eight subcontractors providing services, including Penobscot Electric, Irving Drywall, and Horch Roofing. Rockport Steel has produced and installed new 4x4 steel columns to further reinforce the structure.

Tyler said the new hotel will serve breakfast to guests, as well as the general public, in a portion of the space that once was Peter Ott’s.  In the basement, carpenters are creating space for two meeting rooms that can be combined into one, and seat a total of 125 people.

In March, a new elevator was installed, and it will carry guests to the roof, where a deck is being constructed that will accommodate up to 49 people. The views from there are expansive — over the harbor, out to the bay, and up Mt. Battie.

At the April 7 Camden Select Board meeting, discussion was lively about plans to rebuild and widen the sidewalk in front of the hotel from five to 10 feet. Earlier in the process, the Select Board had met in a workshop with Stuart Smith about the plans, which call for eliminating painted lines in front of 16 Bay View. Those hashmarks had for years delineated space for the unloading of beer, food and other supplies from trucks for a variety of businesses and restaurants up and down the street and the wharfs.

At the same meeting, another Bay View Street business owner, Susan Michaud, objected to the plans for eliminating that loading space, and said she had been on the committee a number of years ago that agreed to mark that spot for trucks so that they wouldn’t disrupt business on the narrow street.

The intent then, she said, was to provide a spot along the congested street for trucks to land; otherwise, they would apt to idle in front of various businesses, including hers — Theo B. Camisole — for up to six-hour stretches. 

“The sidewalk has been in terrible shape and am glad to see it repaired, however, the little yellow hash marks is the unloading zone for the street,” said Michaud. “I'll have trucks in front of my store for six hours. Meat, beer trucks. That's a problem we had 16 years ago. That will destroy my business for sure.”

The Select Board discussion that followed included the possibility of mandating one-way traffic along Bay View Street, designating new and specific loading and unloading zones, and redirecting Camden police officers to monitor the traffic there, all as possible solutions.

Town Manager Patricia Finnigan said that while the matter is one of enforcement, it “also raises issue of whether time has come for this being a one-way street and formalizing loading and unloading zones.”

She noted that the sidewalk rebuild would be a street enhancement and that the delivery truck congestion is “not Stuart's problem, it is the town's problem. In every other city in America they are told to move along. There is no reason that can't happen here.

Meanwhile, Stuart Smith said he had initially proposed fixing the sidewalk, and had worked with Camden Code Enforcement Officer Steve Wilson, to widen it in order to create a better handicap-accessible pedestrian walkway up the Bay View Street incline.

Smith has already torn up the old brick-lined sidewalk, which he told the board, failed to hold up well over the past decade.

“Keith May got permission to do a brick sidewalk when the Old Port [Portland] was doing brick sidewalks,” said Smith. “It was the vogue thing to do.”

But the bricks were buckling, so he is replacing it with poured concrete to match the other town-owned sidewalks. Granite curbing will separate the new sidewalk from the street.

“The brick was falling apart,” Smith told the board. “After the first thaw, it was apparent the frozen bricks were holding the sidewalk together, not the mortar.” 

 After a long discussion, the board ultimately voted 3 to 2 (Jim Heard and Leonard Lookner opposing the measure) to allow Smith to rebuild and maintain, at his own cost, the 10-foot-wide sidewalk as he had planned.

As for the delivery trucks along Bay View Street and where they will now unload is an issue that is to resurface before the Select Board in another month.

As part of the motion to approve the Smith’s sidewalk design, the board added a caveat, directing town staff to return in 30 days with information about formalizing delivery zones and relieving the delivery truck congestion on Bay View Street.

Work at the hotel, meanwhile, continues on schedule. Tyler Smith said the hotel, which will rent moderately-priced rooms, is targeted to open next September. They have to, he said.

“Stu already booked the hotel full.”

Reach Editorial Director Lynda Clancy at lyndaclancy@penbaypilot.com; 207-706-6657