ITHACA, N.Y. — La Tourelle Hotel and Spa, set on 15 acres of farmland on Ithaca’s South Hill, was purchased this spring by a group of mostly Cornell University alumni after being owned and managed by the Wiggins family since the late 1980s.
Under a newly formed LLC, Montreal Partners, 28 Cornellians — 26 of whom are graduates of the university’s renowned hospitality school — have signed on to invest in renovating the hotel’s rooms and lobby to attract more business from visiting parents and professionals in Ithaca.
The cohort of buyers includes nine additional investors as well, who did not graduate from the university.
The La Tourelle property was home to an active farm run by the Miller family before 1986, when Walter Wiggins, a well-known local hotel developer, lawyer and Cornell graduate himself, bought the land to construct the hotel.
The Miller’s old barn was converted into a three-bedroom suite now that’s now available for rent. The property borders Buttermilk Falls State Park and features 54 rooms for overnight guests, a lobby, a small restaurant and the August Moon Spa.
For the past 11 years, Luxury Camping, one of the three general partners in the new project, has been operating Firelight Camps on a leased portion of La Tourelle’s lot, a few steps away from the hotel. Firelight manages 19 luxury glamping tents and hosts live music from local musicians on Tuesday evenings during the summer, opening the property to non-guests.
The two other general partners, Joe Lavin and Bill Minnock, both graduates of Cornell’s hotel school, led investment efforts to acquire the hotel. They’re self-proclaimed travel enthusiasts who have held executive leadership roles internationally and domestically at some of the most well-known hospitality corporations over the last 40 years.
The property wasn’t listed for sale at the time investors purchased it. Earlier this year, Lavin and Minnock offered the Wiggins family a deal that was presumably too enticing to dismiss.
Minnock and Lavin have been investors in Firelight Camps since its inception, during which time the two have maintained strong relationships with the Wiggins family.
“We’ve always said ‘Hey, if you ever want to sell this place, we want to buy,’” Lavin told The Ithaca Voice during a walk-thru tour of the property in August. “And when circumstances in their family came around, we ended up having discussions about how to do it. So there was no reason for us to take [the property] to the market. We worked closely together to make it work for both parties.”
Minnock and Lavin have made names for themselves in the international hospitality and time-sharing industries since receiving their bachelors in the 1970s from Cornell University. Minnock returned to Ithaca to earn his MBA from the university in the 1980s.
The two became close while they worked for the international hospitality brand Marriott, Minnock said.
Minnock retired from Marriot after a 37-year career, during which time he held multiple executive positions, including managing director for the Asia Pacific region at the Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corporation in Singapore.
Lavin, too, has a storied career, having served as senior vice president of development, new products and partner services at Choice Hotels International for nearly a decade.
At Marriott International, Lavin served as the senior vice president of franchising before becoming the executive vice president and managing director of Execustay, Marriott’s corporate housing division.
Lavin stepped away from Marriott in 2005 to launch his own venture in Harborstone Hospitality, which is still operational.
Wiggins opened his first hotel in Aruba in 1969, nearly 20 years before he opened La Tourelle. That venture, the Divi Divi Beach Hotel, morphed into 12 hotels, nine timeshare properties, three casinos and five dining operations, according to reporting from 14850.com when he died in 2020.
It’s important to both Minnock and Lavin that they keep the hotel’s long-established spirit intact in their renovations.
“A lot of our strategy is to build on the legacy of what the Wiggins have built. They have a strong commitment to taking care of the customers,” Minnock said. “They strongly promote the community and the region, which is something we want to continue as new investors.”
Much of the construction, which Lavin said is planned to start Dec. 2, will be focused on the first floor of the hotel, in the lobby and small restaurant and bar.
The lobby’s walls are covered, top to bottom, with framed posters and memorabilia depicting famous musicians and album covers, as well as Ithaca’s history.
“We will be changing the character of the lobby,” Minnock said. He described the area as “extremely comfortable,” but he and Lavin both think the lobby could become a more active location in the hotel.
Apart from cosmetic changes like painting and hanging new art, Minnock said most of the construction will focus on fully integrating the small restaurant space into the lobby, creating a natural flow in the space.
The restaurant and bar will be totally redesigned, aside from the impressive display of stained glass that serves as the ceiling — “We’ll keep that for sure,” Lavin said. “But everything else, it all comes out.”
The restaurant has a brick patio outdoors which Minnock and Lavin plan to update by adding a canopy, outdoor tables and new lighting over the next six months, Lavin said.
Lisa Chervinsky, a Cornell graduate and principal owner of Collective Vision Design, an architecture firm based out of Chicago, Illinois, was hired to lead the renovation.
Thirty five of the rooms were renovated in 2005, the last time the Wiggins family made significant changes to the hotel. The other 20 rooms were left unchanged in previous renovations, and Minnock said they need to be “completely redone,” including updated upholstery, fully renovated bathrooms and new furniture.
The 35 rooms, which Minnock called the “new” rooms, are in better shape and only need cosmetic touch-ups, like new paint and drapes.
The August Moon Spa, which opened as part of the 2005 renovation, will remain as is. So will the downstairs meeting space which, to Minnock’s and Lavin’s delight, has solid hardwood floors “perfect” for hosting weddings and other events, the two explained during the tour. The space accommodates 80 to 100 people and leads out onto a concrete patio overlooking the pond and the grassy scenery the property boasts.
“When the weather is nice, this becomes a very special place,” Lavin said. “But the space is used a lot during the year and it’s an important part of our overall operation.”
The project’s construction crew estimated work would be done by March, Lavin said. The hotel and spa will remain open during construction.