Part 2 of our last post
May 25, 2022 - it's official, we are the new owners of Blue Haven!
This was a great day for us - after months of negotiations, dealing with banks, and lots of planning, we officially became the owners of Blue Haven! After the excitement of the day we quickly realized that the season started in only 3 weeks, and we didn't have the reservation system open yet - nor was the place ready for guest.
Quickly we made a list of must completed before opening day
Paint the units (we affectionally called the old color nicotine yellow)
Replace the linen
Install new technology - wifi, remote locks, smart tv's
Spruce up the landscaping
All this had to be done while also figuring out how to take reservations. Luckily, Blue Haven has amazing guest who were waiting to book the resort for their yearly trip, and we quickly got to know our regulars. Unfortunately, that was one of the last lucky things to happen in year one!
We quickly realized that the well water filtration and softening system had been long neglected and had to be replaced. Before our first guest made it to Greenbush we had spent $20,000 to make sure we had the best water in Northern Michigan! This would become one of many systems we found needed upgrades - but something we knew had to be done if we were going to host guest, family, and friends.
Opening day
We cut it close, but buy opening day we had hit all the major renovations that were needed. The paint was hurried (far from perfect) but the units looked new. A new bright white made the units look young again!
While we loved to retro look of the old tube tv's we knew they had to be replaced. Outfitting the cottages with smart tv's was an easy choice, but getting resort wide wifi to service them became a challenge. The cottages are constructed with concrete blocks - that's not conducive to having strong wifi signals! Through a lot of trial an error, high speed routers were installed in different cottages to cover the entire resort, allowing us to get use out of the smart tv's and smart locks.
The beach and grounds were groomed, and the outdoor equipment was refreshed.
We even found stairs on the beach that had long been claimed by the sand.
New sheets were in place, and the excess items collected over
the years were cleared from the complex.
But this was just the first three weeks. Our work wasn't done, and the list of needed renovations kept on growing. Part three explores what we did to improve the cosmetic experience in the units over the summer, along with renovations competed in winter 2022/23.