The Palm Beach Post 

Sun, Feb 22, 1976

Page 31

By CAROL DUNLAP Post Staff Writer

​

Retirees' Winter Home May Be Closing Doors

 

It doesn't have the old-world elegance of the Breakers or the jet-set chic of the Colony, but the Monterey Hotel in downtown West Palm Beach has been a good winter home for many retired northerners. So good that when its residents learned their home would not last the winter, that the hotel - a little shabby but still structurally sound - was to be razed unceremoniously for a city parking lot, some of them couldn't decide whether to fight or switch.

 

For weeks now, the still-proud lobby of the old hotel on Clematis Street has been thick with rumors ("I hear somebody bought the chandeliers already"), speculation ("Do you suppose they might disrupt the services?") and regret. One resident wrote to the owners in Evanston, Ill. and the city manager of West Palm Beach that they ought to be ashamed of depriving so many nice people of their home. Another decided to take it to City Hall. "It's wicked to invite people down here and do this," says John Driscoll, a dapper bachelor from Detroit.

 

As did the other regulars, last November he received the usual notice inviting his return reservation. He arrived at Christmas and expected to remain through April, spending the warm winter days in an uneventful round of correspondence, shopping and dining, with an occasional bicycle ride or trip to the library. But in January, Driscoll and the other residents received notice that the hotel would be closing its doors for the last time on Feb. 29.

 

Some panic-mongers, as the holdouts call them, rushed out to secure new accommodations. Others complained that nothing comparable was available and sat around hoping somehow for a reprieve - "They haven't even broken ground for the new state office building - surely it won't take two years to pave a parking lot?"

 

The confusion and the rumors were compounded by the arrival of a representative of the owners, whose job it was to preside over the liquidation of the hotel. He told the residents the city wanted to tear the hotel down right away. Driscoll, whose experience in the Detroit construction and insurance business taught him that you can fight city hall, went there three weeks ago for an explanation.

 

At a workshop following the regular meeting of the West Palm Beach City Commission, he respectfully requested a postponement of the closing of the hotel until the end of the season. "The city has not been that pushed on it," a city official told Driscoll. "They (the owners) felt they were losing money - they suggested the time. The city's willing to go along with an extension."

 

"I sympathize with you and I'm not really sure what we can do about it," another official said. However, he added, "we can't really start our construction until we get all the property."

 

And indeed, under the agreement for a new state office building on Clematis Street, the city is supposed to provide parking on First Street, and two landowners there have not agreed to sell. In any case, the land the city needs is not under the main part of the Monterey, but under the annex, which has been empty for some time.

 

The annex houses all the hotel's utility connections, which would cost about $20,000 to move, according to City Manager Richard Simmons. Because the city doesn't want to go into the hotel business, even until the season ends and the owners are eager to sell the old structure, built in 1925 for $350,000 and sold 51 years later for $125,000, its demise seems imminent.

 

Meanwhile, at the hotel, a few of the guests have managed to ignore the earth-shaking events around them. Late on a warm winter afternoon, a woman from Alabama ("There's a few of us here from the South") looks up from her correspondence to share a hearty laugh. "I had an uncle who was just a real joker," says Kathleen Seale.

 

"He used to say, 'I didn't know damn yankee was two words until I grew old.'" A yankee oldtimer, who gets around with the help of a cane and the bus which stops in front of the Monterey, arrives sunburned and windblown from a day in Palm Beach. "I got the theater program - my, wouldn't it be nice to see 'Finian's Rainbow,'" she says, apropos of nothing.

 

But the general subject of conversation is the impending close of the hotel. "They wait for me sometimes," says Driscoll, the acknowledged leader. "They don't know what to do. They ask if I've heard anything, if they should go get another room." 

​

In an upstairs hallway, Grace Carey Holmes, a widow from Portsmouth, N.H., who stays trim and youthful by swimming in the Monterey pool, stops to complain about the uncertainty. "I'm an old woman," she says, confident that her appearance belies her 81 years, "and I've gone all my life without nerves."

​

Holmes, who has been returning to the Monterey for a dozen years, has a contingency plan. She has found another room with a pool, although the room doesn't have a phone and is a long bus ride away from her church. "I'm staying until the last shot is fired," says Holmes, a veteran with her naval officer husband of tropical duty in the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Guam.

​

In the television room, the guests listen to chilling reports on the weather in their northern home towns. Herb Radke doesn't want to return yet to Grand Rapids, Mich., because he doesn't have snow tires on his car. "If we had known," he says, "I never would have come for this season. Common sense tells you that what's left at this time (accommodations) is what nobody wants."

​

In addition to the inconvenience, Radke, a retired teacher, regrets the loss of his winter home on aesthetic grounds. "It (was) a beautiful hotel, although it may not be now," he says. "There's a spirit here, something distinctive. You won't find these facilities anywhere else."

​

The most distinctive part of the hotel is, of course, the spacious lobby, which is panelled and beamed with pecky cypress, lit by wrought-iron chandeliers and carpeted with two worn but handsome oriental rugs. On a recent evening all the seats - some Danish modern, others Florida-boom antique - were occupied as the guests waited in vain for the owner's representative to appear for a meeting. "They look like they're waiting for an oracle," some quipped.

​

If the Monterey's future is still uncertain, so was its past. A few years after it was built in what was then called "uptown" because of its elevation, a hurricane helped knock the bottom out of the Florida boom and the hotel went into receivership. In the ensuing years, the Monterey changed hands several times. In 1935 it was acquired by a Chicago hotel operator "for a consideration said to be in the neighborhood of $50,000." Nine years later it was sold to a Miami judge who acquired a liquor license shortly thereafter.

​

Originally, the Spanish-style hotel, which is constructed around a central courtyard, had 175 rooms, a dining room and several shops on the western side. The dining room has long since disappeared; the last of the shops was vacated last fall; and because of plumbing and wiring problems, only 80 rooms are still in use. The building has suffered from the general deterioration of the downtown area (some of the guests have been mugged on the street), but inside appearances still are kept up.

​

Driscoll's room on the third floor overlooking the courtyard is just large enough to contain a bed and a chest of drawers. He has a washbasin in the corner full of fresh fruit, and an adjoining bathroom which he shares with Herb Radke. "It's not a plush place," Driscoll says, "but it's clean. You get clean linen every day. For a resort place it's just fine." The rent is $123.50 monthly (more for the larger rooms overlooking the street), which he thinks is really too low.

​

"It's a tourist hotel but they can't get resort rates because of the location," says Simmons, the city manager. "The value is in the property. The hotel is more of a negative factor - to use the property we've got to tear it down, which will cost $50,000. The owners wanted more than $125,000, which is about what they paid for it in '48 or '49, but they accepted our offer because of the cost of demolition."

​

Eventually, Simmons says, the corner lot at Georgia and Clematis will become a pay-parking area, providing the city with revenue to buy up the rest of the block.

​

At week's end John Driscoll still was turning over stones trying to interest the city attorney, the mayor, the Chamber of Commerce and the historical society in the fate of the Monterey, its full house of 80 paying guests, its 15 employes. But ultimately, only the owner could reprieve the hotel, and although the owner and her representative were visiting in the Palm Beaches, they could not be reached. But ultimately, only the owner can reprieve the hotel.

​

"The cost of operation is phenomenal," explains Douglas Butchart, a personal friend and representative of the owners of the hotel, which he says lost in excess of $50,000 last year, "particularly when we know that the hotel is closing down."

​

"We have deadlines in our lives as well," he continues. "The date set for the closing is April 30, which gives us only six weeks to dispose of everything. The guests have had their notice, six weeks ago. We have helped them to relocate. We even hired a truck and moved some of them at our expense." In other words - no.

​

Even if he fails to win a reprieve for the Monterey, this has been a winter for John Driscoll to remember. He has a car, an immaculate 1957 Thunderbird, so he may move into a motel or he may return home to Detroit. "But I'm going to make this my permanent home soon," he says, a visitor to Florida since 1937. "I just can't think of anyplace that compares with West Palm Beach."

........................................................................................................................................................................