Family buys Bar Harbor hotel Witham partnership expands holdings with Atlantic Oakes

BAR HARBOR – The Witham family, which owns several local hotels, has expanded its holdings by buying a local resort long owned by another prominent lodging-business family.

The Witham Family Partnership bought the Atlantic Oakes Resort & Conference Center from the Cough family at the beginning of this month.

The Witham Family Partnership owns the Bar Harbor Inn, which overlooks the harbor, and the Bar Harbor Grand Hotel on Main Street; David J. Witham, CEO of the partnership, personally owns the Acadia Inn on Eden Street. Christine Witham, David J. Witham’s daughter, owned the Maine Street Motel downtown but sold it earlier this year to Mount Desert Island Hospital, which plans to renovate it for hospital uses.

David J. Witham indicated in a recent news release that he has long admired the Atlantic Oakes property, which sits between Route 3 and Frenchman Bay north of downtown.

“It’s on a magnificent oceanfront site,” Witham said in the statement. “The conference center is an important part of our interest in the business as well, as it can accommodate conferences and private functions of up to 300 people.”

The sale price of the Atlantic Oakes was not disclosed, but according to information listed in the town’s official tax assessor database, the property most recently had an assessed value of $6.3 million.

Dick Cough, who managed the hotel and was one of seven cousins who inherited the property from their fathers, said Monday the decision to sell was not easy. Dick Cough said several of his cousins had concerns about being able to keep the property in the family and wanted to make other kinds of investments.

“There were other things they wanted to do,” he said.

Selling to the Witham family, Cough said, made the decision a little easier.

“My dad and David were friends,” he said. “They had the same goals and ran their hotels the same way.”

Brothers Bernard “Sonny” Cough and Jimmy Cough, Dick Cough’s father and uncle, had owned several lodging properties over the past half century, including facilities in Bangor, Boothbay, Bucksport, Ellsworth and North Conway, N.H. Jimmy predeceased Sonny, and when Sonny Cough died last year, all the properties except those on MDI had been sold off, Dick Cough said.

Cough and some of his cousins bought out the others to retain ownership of the adjacent Bayview Hotel, he said. Cough and his immediate family also own the nearby Atlantic Eyrie Hotel.

“It was always my dad’s dream to have a hotel,” Cough said. “It is the end of an era.”

In the statement, Witham indicated that he and his family plan to keep all the current staff and to operate the resort as it has been, but some physical improvements are being contemplated. David C. Witham, the CEO’s son, works as an architect in Portsmouth, N.H., and has been hired to enhance the property’s physical appearance over the next three years, according to the statement.

Christine Witham will serve as operating and general manager of the 153-room, 16-acre resort.

btrotter@bangordailynews.net

460-6318