Competing in the resort business on Cape Cod is like playing in the American League East—the stakes are weighty, the competition is intense and the wallets are open.


Even in a troubled economy when everyone—the high-end traveler included—is monitoring discretionary spending like eyeing toddlers near a roiling surf in July, the top resort owners and operators on the Cape and Islands and in select places throughout New England are betting against gloom and doom, and are banking on happy days here again. In behind-the-scenes brinksmanship for an anticipated economic turnaround in 2010, call it Resort Wars, they are re-positioning themselves to compete in a new and uncertain millennium for the moniker of simply being the best.


Leading the way to Cape Cod Bay, the historic Ocean Edge Resort and Golf Club overlooking the bay on bucolic Route 6A in Brewster, will have spent $37 million by 2010 in recent resort upgrades, according to Ocean Edge General Manager Robert J. Newman. The resort, owned by Corcoran Jennison of Boston, boasts of 429 acres, 335 luxury rooms, 21,000 square feet of dedicated meeting and function space, five distinct restaurants, six pools, a new redesigned 18-hole championship Jack Nicholas trademark course, 11 world-class tennis courts, on site bike access to both the picturesque Cape Cod Rail Trail and the Cape Cod National Seashore, a wide swath of private sandy beachfront, and a recently completed 12,500 square foot, multi-use function addition to the mansion building with a second floor open-air restaurant, the Ocean Terrace, a lounge and bar that offers seagull views of the bay from Dennis to Provincetown.


There’s more, if you’re counting the beans. Recently completed is a 2,500-square-foot pavilion addition to the course’s Linx Restaurant to accommodate meetings, events and tournaments with putting views of the 18th green. In addition, extensive luxury upgrades are planned for mansion wing guest rooms, and ground will be broken in the fall on a 5,000-square-foot fitness center health club on the Villages side of the resort near the golf course—rounding out other renovations and upgrades at Ocean Edge, which now offers club memberships for golf, pool, fitness and use of the private beach.


In the new era of resorts, Ocean Edge, the former 1890 estate of Roland Nickerson—a National Register of Historic Places site—is as much a private club, as it is a venue for lodging, functions and impressive dining.


“We’re confident that the economy will bounce back, and we want to be prepared to be the premier resort in New England,” said General Manager Newman. “We believe it’s within our grasp.” 



Upgrading


But the competition is stiff, locally and regionally. Just down the street overlooking Pleasant Bay, the Four-Star bucolic Wequassett Inn and Resort with Four-Diamond luxury accommodations has made a similar large investment in recent resort improvements and enhancements—with the on-site upgrades of some of the Cape’s finest restaurants, including the award-winning Twenty Eight Atlantic, the chic renovation of its pool area with wrap-around boardwalk, designed and built by Chatham’s Polhemus Savery DaSilva, the addition of signature bay-view rooms, a spa, new tennis facilities and a children’s center. “It’s been gratifying to see what’s been accomplished,” said Managing Partner Mark J. Novota, noting the resort’s continued commitment to excellence and to positioning itself for an economic rebound.

“We believe the resort business will rebound strong on the Cape and elsewhere, and we’re working diligently to set the standard.”


History is a cornerstone of such Cape Cod resorts. The Wequasset Inn and Resort, the only area resort to be a member of the prestigious Preferred Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, is located on the shores where Sachem John Quason Towsowett in 1665 sold land to William Nickerson, who settled the Town of Chatham. For more than 400 years, the Wampanoag Indians chipped arrowheads here and gathered quahogs for wampum.



Bar None


Follow the prevailing summer winds about three miles to the southeast and you’ll come across the Chatham Bars Inn, with its commanding view of Chatham’s Outer Harbor and North Beach where seals pile up in the sun like a rock jetty. Impressive expansions and upgrades continue here. Setting off the first volley years ago in these Resort Wars, the Chatham Bars Inn—the former 1912 rambling and refined seaside lodge of Charles Ashley Hardy, a prominent Boston stockbroker—invested millions in new properties, renovations, expansions and upgrades of this world-renowned landmark, not far from pastoral Chatham Village.


The ten-mile loop from Brewster on Cape Cod Bay to Chatham along the Great Outer Beach on the Atlantic, with its three graceful resorts, offers some of the most stylish stretch of resorts per square mile in the East.