Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 6, 1990 TAG: 9003061867
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAULA SPAN THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: STRATFORD, CONN. LENGTH: Long
Sometimes they want his opinions on lofty kinds of issues politicians are accustomed to addressing: "Is this guy Gorbachev for real?" "Do we dare let those Germans get back together?" And, the perennial favorite, "What's the matter with you Democrats anyway?"
Other times, they want more towels.
It's humbling, McGovern says. One might think that the 67-year-old former senator - who carried just one state and the District of Columbia in the 1972 presidential election, lost his 18-year Senate seat in the Reagan avalanche of 1980 and made an abortive run at the Democratic nomination in 1984 - had been sufficiently humbled already.
But no, McGovern had to buy this faded 150-room motor inn off the Merritt Parkway and start worrying about boiler breakdowns and driveway resurfacing.
This is McGovern's first-ever business venture. He visits the place every other weekend, flying up from his Washington home to putter around with paint brushes and fabric swatches, confer with the managers and urge that bananas be offered with the breakfast cereal.
"Every picture that hangs in this place, I hung; every inch of wallpaper I picked out," he said, happily surveying his refurbished dining room, all brass sconces and hanging ivy.
"I ordered the grand piano so people could gather round and sing. . . . I think a hotel should kind of reflect the personality of the owner, and this one is beginning to."
A cantankerous conservative might surmise that this is why the inn - officially reopened last year at a reception featuring a bald eagle sculpted in ice, bagpipers and an impromptu address by the enthusiastic new proprietor - is operating in the red.
Recently, during a slow weeknight when temperatures were nearly arctic, the inn was just a third full. Only four dining room tables were in use at 7:30 - of which one was occupied by the staff, one by a reporter and one by a recently engaged young couple enjoying a complimentary dinner meant to lure wedding receptions.
But McGovern points out that the 30-year-old Stratford, once a local institution, had grown noticeably down-at-the-heels by the time he purchased it in late 1988.
"Other hotels began to come into the area, and the people that owned it kind of got discouraged and just let it go downhill."
Like any old building, it has demonstrated a sponge-like ability to absorb renovation expenditures, and that, McGovern said, is the cause of his temporarily bloodied balance sheet.
The inn, he said, with true entrepreneurial dauntlessness, "is going to go. It's got too much going for it not to."
(Notes from a recent stay: Staff, efficient and very friendly. Room, spacious, well-priced at $65, needs a reading lamp. Mattress, nicely firm. No room service. Broiled scallops, a tad bland. Check TV reception in Room 305.)
A boyhood fascination with hotels, undiminished by the thousands he's encountered on campaign trails and lecture circuits, is being played out here.
Main Street in McGovern's hometown of Mitchell, S.D., boasted two venerable hotels that "always seemed like mysterious, exotic places. I heard stories of what went on there."
When a high school debate tournament took him to the Radisson in Minneapolis, "I thought I was in heaven. Checking into my own room. Big, thick towels! Hot water! Going down to the dining room and ordering anything you wanted."
He had now and again confessed this "lifelong love affair" to his pal Jim O'Donnell, who had managed the Stratford Inn in its heyday and who passed the word when the Irish hotel group that owned the inn put it on the market.
The original asking price of $4 million was well beyond McGovern's reach, despite a tidy income from public speaking at up to $6,500 per chat. But when there were no takers after a year, McGovern was able to buy the place for $1 million, "a whale of a good buy for a hotel."
About the time of McGovern's purchase, O'Donnell says, "I used to catch him sitting in the lobby by himself, staring out the window for an hour and smiling."
O'Donnell, now the Stratford's managing director, and Jeanette Weir, its resident manager, actually run the place day-to-day and so far have staved off the boss's pressure for bananas. (They turn black too quickly.)
Unlike the fictional Stratford Inn in Vermont that Bob Newhart runs on his sitcom (on which McGovern made a recent guest appearance), this is not a quaint clapboard antique.
The real Stratford Inn, set into a hillside, has five stucco and brick buildings, a pool, lots of parking and looks like a standard-issue motel.
The glass-walled dining room does, as the Stratford Inn brochure puts it, overlook "the peaceful Housatonic River" and "rolling hills of trees," but also gives patrons a good look at the parkway and the vast Sikorsky Aircraft plant across the road.
Inside, though, the renovations have been extensive, and they continue. Bedspreads and drapes, carpets and wall coverings, the fireplace and overstuffed furniture in the lobby - they're all new.
"He's great with color schemes," O'Donnell says of the hotelier.
The chef is a recent recruit. Ditto Michael and Marcia are the Top-40 duo that plays the lounge on weekends. Weir and Eleanor McGovern, an ardent gardener, have planted 300 bulbs to ensure a colorful spring.
Besides the $1.5 million lent by Washington's Century National Bank to finance the purchase and renovation, McGovern has sunk $700,000 of his own into the Stratford Inn.
He could use another million or three to beef up its conference facilities and improve the landscaping. Discussions with potential partners are under way.
The occupancy rate is "approaching 50 percent; we haven't hit it consistently yet," McGovern said. "If you want to make money you have to be up around 60 percent."
It gives him pause. "It's a big risk. I don't have the kind of resources that make you comfortable with that kind of investment."
This is the sort of situation business types probably have in mind when they complain about politicians who never have to meet a payroll. And McGovern agrees with that.
"I wish I'd done this before I'd run for president. It would've given me insight into the anxiety any independent businessman or farmer must have. . . .
"Now I've had to meet a payroll every week. I've got to pay the bank every month. . . . I've got to pay the state of Connecticut taxes . . . . It gives you a whole new perspective on what other people worry about."
On the other hand, there's this new contract with a medical equipment firm that's about to book 30 rooms a night for its trainees every night for a year. "That'll put us in the black almost overnight," he said.
McGovern, said manager O'Donnell, is "the most `un-negative' man I've ever met. I don't think he knows he lost the election."
Actually, McGovern has not lost sight of that event, but he does put a particular spin on it.
The fireplace in the lobby is flanked by glass cases displaying McGovern buttons: the short-lived "McGovern-Eagleton," the rare "Wall Street for McGovern-Shriver," the defiant postelectoral "Don't Blame Me, I'm From Massachusetts."
The innkeeper can accentuate the positive in this small corner of New England; he can hang the Miami Herald front page announcing his nomination and not hang a front page bannered with Nixon's victory.
"I never really felt like a loser," McGovern said amiably. "Almost before the votes were counted, Nixon was on the way out. Agnew was forced to resign. John Mitchell was on the way to jail with practically the whole White House staff following him."
by CNB