The $30 million sale of the Nantucket Inn was one of the largest real estate deals in island history. It was also one of the most complicated.
In the days since Nantucket Current broke the news of the sale late last month, we caught up with the seller, Wesley Finch. He is the founder and chairman of The Finch Group (TFG), a real estate development and property management company that had owned and operated the Nantucket Inn since 1988.
The 4.5 acre property near Nantucket Memorial Airport includes 100 condominium units, half of which were owned by Finch, and the other half by 51 separate owners. The sale to Vaios Theodorakos’ VTT Property Management was approved only after Finch and the other 51 condominium owners voted to sell their interest in the property.
“Everyone decided to sell,” Finch said, including some condo owners who had their units for more than 30 years.
The Finch Group will be staying on to manage the property, he added. Finch’s company acquired over 50 percent of the rooms after the property went into bankruptcy in 1988.
Why sell now?
“It’s a great time to sell the property,” he said. “Nantucket island has changed dramatically. Historically, we’ve been the least expensive hotel on the island. We want to fix it up and do some stuff with it and change it around a little bit. But you can’t borrow money with a hundred different owners. You can’t do it.”
Regarding the town’s interest in acquiring the Nantucket Inn for affordable housing purposes and as the potential site for a new senior center, Finch said a deal was never truly close to happening.
“That was never real,” he said. “The town said we have to go to Town Meeting, tie it up for six monts or a year. There were too many ifs, ands, or buts, that we didn’t think it made sense. The town was bouncing around in the low 20s (millions), so there was never a meeting of the minds. But they were very pleasant, and we had very nice conversations. In hindsight, I think the town should have done it, but it was too cumbersome to make it work.”
