A Shelburne landmark — or eyesore, depending on your point of view — is slated for demolition this week. If your morning commute took you past this Route 7 curiosity across from Almartin Volvo, the shuttered, tumbledown restaurant probably still appeared much as it does in the photo at right: a hodgepodge of boarded-up doors and shattered windows topped, improbably, by a rickety faux-lighthouse.
It may have been your last glimpse of the blighted property. As of 10 a.m., excavators were slated to begin demolishing the restaurant that former Seven Days writer Lauren Ober discovered was once “the swank restaurant in town.” (Ober wrote about the Harbor Hide-A-Way’s origins, 1960s hey-day, and eventual decline in a WTF column in 2010.) She reported that the restaurant got its start in 1941 as a hot dog stand, and by the 1960s was a “special occasion” eatery-meets-museum filled to the brim with an eccentric collection.
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Where are the environmental freaks? Isn’t this an historical sight in someones historical past that would stop the demolition? Gracious, have we become so unliberal and so unprogressive that we allow this demolition without the filings of 623 different permits filled out in triplicate and filed quadruply to stop it. Gracious with action like this we are going to be eventually able to mow our lawn without an act 250 permit. Dammit I will have to mow the lawn tomorrow.
If the Mr. DuBrul wanted this property so much, why did it take him so long to buy it?
I’d heard that the family owning the property was going to rebuild, but finally decided it wasn’t worth it and sold it to DeBrul.