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Restored inn signals hope Will renovation of inn fuel efforts to revitalize Montross? Date published: 2/7/2011
BY FRANK DELANO Cindy Brigman Syndergaard has taken 5,614 square feet of Montross' revitalization into her own hands. While town and county governments ponder changes and improvements in the heart of the town of 315, Syndergaard is managing a battalion of tradesmen renovating a historic inn on Courthouse Square. The old heart-pine floors of The Inn at Montross were covered with dust last week as carpenters, electricians, plumbers and painters replaced windows and doors, revamped bathrooms, stuffed insulation into walls and performed dozens of other jobs to bring life--and paying visitors--back to the structure built around 1800 on the site of a 17th-century tavern. "This isn't busy. This is fun! This is progress," Syndergaard said of the work that will soon result in the reopening of the long-vacant inn. When the project is completed in April, the inn, which sat vacant for almost four years, will feature five guest rooms, a 65-seat restaurant and a 40-seat fireside lounge, Syndergaard said. Beth Parker was sweeping up dust with a broom last week. She and her husband, Rhoderick, a vegetable grower, live across the street. They are also partners in the venture. "The old inn was getting to be an eyesore. I just wanted to decorate it. That's all I wanted to do," Beth Parker said. Her chance came when the property was sold in July at a foreclosure auction. At the auction, Parker said, her husband and Rhys Weakley, owner of a building-supply business in town, agreed to become partners and bought the property for $159,500. It last sold in 1998 for $455,000. Weakley declined to say how much the restoration is costing. "We're spending enough to make it a nice place," he said. The Parkers and Weakley and his wife, Nancy, enticed Syndergaard and her husband, Ken, to join the partnership and manage the property. Cindy Syndergaard had the experience; she had managed the "extremely profitable" inn from 1997 to 2004. Word of the inn's reopening has spread, she said. "I've received e-mails and calls from 75 former guests who want to come back. The inn is a destination place."
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