Pete and Thea Kaizer started building the Brant Point Inn themselves during the winter of 1985 with the help of Pete’s commercial fishing buddies.
“It was wild times,” he recalled this week.
Over the next 35 years, the Kaizers established the Brant Point Inn as one of the mainstays of Nantucket’s lodging industry and forged decades-long relationships with their guests and staff who kept coming back. But this summer was their last season in business on North Beach Street. The Kaizers have sold the Brant Point Inn and are passing the torch to a group of commercial real estate investors from Boston who also happen to be friends and clients.
“For me, it was time for more time – a new granddaughter and a new chapter,” said Thea Kaizer, who grew up working in the island hospitality industry. “For all my life, it’s always been part of who I am. I’ve always enjoyed being with people. The highlight of all those years was my guests. And we had the best staff who were like family.”
After losing some close family members who passed away in recent years, coupled with the challenges posed by the pandemic, “we looked at each other and said ‘maybe it’s time to lighten our load’,” Pete Kaizer said.
After months of discussions with several interested parties, the three buildings that make up the Brant Point Inn property on North Beach Street and Dolphin Court were quietly sold in late August for $10 million. The buyers are the principals of Anchor Line Partners, a Boston-based real estate investment firm, and Nauset Strategies, a firm that specializes in government and community relations, and strategic communications. They intend to renovate and upgrade the inn with a small addition, while continuing to run it as a lodging establishment into the future.
Michael Vaughn, the founder of Nauset Strategies, has a relationship with Pete Kaizer that goes back years to when he first started booking fishing trips with Kaizer aboard his charter boat the Althea K.
Andrew Maher, the co-founder and managing partner of Anchor Line, said he’s been coming to the island for years. For both firms, it will be their first commercial real estate venture on Nantucket.
“We didn’t have our eye on anything specific, but given the opportunity to get into that business on Nantucket, it’s hard to turn down,” Maher said. “Adaptive reuse is our play. A lot of people come to the island and start by tearing stuff down. That’s not our play. We want to be respectful and carry on what Pete and Thea started there, which is a great hospitality offering in a great location, and continue that legacy.”
Maher and the new ownership group have already started some renovations inside the buildings of the inn, and have submitted plans for an 1,800 square foot addition. They hope to have the two buildings along North Beach Street open for the summer of 2022, and the business will be rebranded with a new name, Maher said, one that he is not yet prepared to reveal.
“We were thrilled to buy from the Kaizers,” Maher said. “There’s been a long relationship between my partner Michael Vaughan and Pete that they cultivated while fishing for tuna out in the Atlantic. When he gave us the opportunity to buy it, we jumped on it.”
Kaizer said Blue Flag Partners, the real estate investment firm that just bought the nearby Beachside hotel for $38 million, was also pursuing the Brant Point Inn. But when they couldn’t move fast enough for Kaizer’s liking, he went back to his friend Vaughan for more advice on the process of selling the property and to let him know it probably wasn’t going to work out with Blue Flag Partners.
“The next three words out of his mouth were ‘we’ll buy it’,” Kaizer recalled “I said ‘who?’ And he said ‘me, Andrew (Maher) and the others, all guys you’ve fished with’.”
And so the deal came together, culminating in the closing on Aug. 26. Even then, Thea Kaizer felt so strongly about honoring the inn’s existing reservations, she decided to lease back the property through the final reservation of the season. It just so happened that their last guest was one of the first people they had welcomed to stay at the Brant Point Inn when it opened back in the 1980s.
“We built those places, we had such a great location, so it makes you feel good that someone’s going to take it over, do the upgrades that we were thinking about doing – things that needed to be upgraded,” Pete Kaizer said. “We’re excited for these guys.”
Looking back on their 35-year run in the island lodging industry after building the Brant Point Inn themselves, the Kaizers remarked on the special relationships they developed with guests – many who became their friends – and the staff who grew up around their own children, Katie and P.J. They loved that the Brant Point Inn attracted not just those on vacation, but also construction workers who were stationed on the island for a project. “It was a cross section,” Pete Kaizer emphasized. But still, they expressed confidence in their decision that now was the right time to move on.
“It’s not about what I will miss the most,” Thea Kaizer said. “It’s about what I will look forward to the most. More time for time with family and grandchildren.”
