New wave looms over Cape tradition
Many see condo boom as a threat in Provincetown
PROVINCETOWN -- The night began with a couple of Long Island iced teas. After that, Kent Fenske and Jeff Ford were not sure where they were headed. For the moment, it did not matter. Fenske and Ford, a gay couple from Minnesota, were right where they wanted to be. It was early evening. It was tea dance. And although the crowd was thinner than usual on Wednesday, the Boatslip Resort was still rocking.
DJ Maryalice saw to that, as always. She was spinning her records near the dance floor while young men named Jon and Josh and Fabio slung drinks. For them, these are seasonal jobs. But even staff members from Florida and California understand the significance of tea dance, a nightly event where locals meet for drinks and summer visitors reconnect with Provincetown's scene backed by a disco beat.
It lasts from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Boatslip during the summer, but this is no hotel happy hour. This is a Provincetown tradition that has continued for some 30 years on Cape Cod Bay. Customers say it was one of the first places where gay people could go and dance together without worry. And to this day it has remained a meeting place. The night, for many, begins here.
But tea dance, like other Provincetown traditions, is now in jeopardy, threatened by that sentinel of progress: the condominium conversion. The Boatslip is for sale, listed at $14.5 million, more than double the $7.2 million price it sold for in 2001. And if it sells, many believe the 45-room hotel with 207 feet of precious waterfront property will become condos, just like other Provincetown inns have in recent years. Tourists would be replaced by owners. And tea dance -- which took its name from English teatime, but serves alcoholic beverages instead -- would come to an end as locals know it.
Simple economics are driving the changes. These properties are worth more as condos than as hotels. But with the number of condominium conversions double what it was in Provincetown just two years ago, locals are getting worried. For town officials, it is a financial issue. People who rent privately owned condos to weekend visitors do not have to pay room taxes, explained town manager Keith Bergman. Therefore, as condos replace guesthouses, the town loses room tax revenue, he said, a source of income worth roughly $900,000 annually.
Bergman estimates that the town could take in an extra $500,000 a year if the state charged room taxes on private rentals. That is an issue that he hopes state lawmakers will address. But more than money is at stake here. What is happening in Provincetown is also about character. Some locals worry that their erstwhile fishing village is turning into another Nantucket. Or worse: Key West, an upscale beachside town where high prices have driven regular folks to the fringes. And as luck would have it, a Key West developer stands at the center of this gathering storm, promising he will do what he can to save at least one piece of the past: the tea dance.
''It's not a question of the owners being unhappy with the investment. They want to cash in. That's the deal," explained Richard Ferrell, the managing partner of the Key West-based ownership group that owns the Boatslip. It makes good business sense to them, he said.
But Ferrell said he disagrees with his fellow partners and is now fighting to preserve the Boatslip as it is: ''It's not about the money to me. It's about keeping that place."
Rumors about the Boatslip began circulating in the spring, coming as no surprise to anyone following the local real estate market. In recent years, condo developments have been swallowing homes, hotels, and local hangouts with increasing regularity. The town assessor's office has logged 25 conversions in each of the last two fiscal years. And while that does not sound like much by Boston standards, it is a good bit more than the 12 conversions recorded in 2001 or the 13 in 2002. They are also significant, said Provincetown's assistant assessor, Richard Faust, because the town is just 3 miles long and a half-mile wide.
''For locals," Faust said, ''it's essentially displacing people. Everybody who rents, including myself, lives in fear of the condo conversion."
Landmarks began to disappear or change in recent years as the Sandpiper Beach House, Captain Lysander Inn, Ship's Bell, and other guesthouses turned into condominums. Still more changes are to come. The Best Western Tides, a large hotel on Provincetown's West End, already has announced that this will be its last season. But none of these changes have affected locals like the closing of the Moors Restaurant.
Built in 1939, the Moors, owned and run by the Costa family, became known for its nightly sing-alongs, jazz brunches, and live entertainment. It was by locals, for locals, and for this it was loved. But when Mylan Costa -- tired of decades in the restaurant business -- sold it in 1998, it did not take long for it to be demolished. The site is now a complex of eight condominiums called the Village at the Moors.
''The condo-ization of Provincetown is hurting it," said Costa, who lives in North Eastham. ''I think it is becoming another Nantucket. Nantucket's nice. Believe me. It's a nice place. But it's definitely changing the makeup of the town. It's not a funky village anymore. That's gone forever. It's a commercial product now."
That is what concerns people now that another tradition -- tea dance -- is on the block. Michael Landow, the general manager of the Boatslip, said customers ask him 20 times a day what is going on, whether the place has been sold, and if it is turning into condos. He cannot say much. It is all still undecided. But conversion to condominiums is a possibility.
It says so in the official real estate listing; the seller's agent, Bill Dougal, said there has been interest, and Ferrell knows it would be profitable to sell the property to a condominium developer. For years, he said, developers have approached him, unsolicited, to show him proposals for luxury condominiums at the location. They've been priced, he said, as high as $2.5 million each.
But he did not sell then, Ferrell said, and he does not want to sell now, even if that puts him at odds with the rest of his ownership group. He sees himself, he said, as a caretaker of a tradition. Beyond that, he, too, cannot say much. Lawyers are involved, and as Ferrell explained, it is a ''sticky situation," one that he hopes to have resolved by the end of the summer. In the meantime, tea dance rolled on last week, thumping and bumping into the night to the beat of DJ Maryalice's records.
Fenske and Ford drank their Long Island iced teas on the sprawling deck overlooking the water. Jeff Burrows, 45, of Andover, mingled in the crowd. And Robert Pilon, 37, of Montreal, wondered aloud how they will talk about the Boatslip years from now, if it ends up closing down.
''We'll be saying, 'You remember the Boatslip?' We'll be the old generation," said Pilon. ''And the new generation will say, 'Ahh, we don't care.' "
Pilon and his friends kept talking. Others danced and drank. When the clock struck 7 p.m., resort staff brought out a mop and a bucket of water. It was time to clean up and move on. The night was only just beginning. 