ORLEANS — Seasonal workers have begun arriving on Cape Cod to provide much-needed support for the region’s businesses over the summer.
“We expect to have close to 5,000 this summer, which tracks with last year and the recovery we saw in 2023,” said Paul Niedzwiecki, executive director of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce, referring to the number of workers who come temporarily to the U.S. to fill labor gaps across the Cape.
Finding housing for them has become a year-round job for many employers, and ensuring that housing is decent is yet another undertaking.
The case of the Seashore Park Inn in Orleans offers a window on what can go wrong and some evidence that things can be made right.
For the last two years, the Chatham Bars Inn has leased all 62 rooms at the Seashore Park, on the Eastham-Orleans rotary, to house some of the people it needs to staff a 217-room hotel, 30 cottages, several restaurants and bars, and other amenities.
According to Claudio Togo, managing director of Chatham Bars, the inn relies heavily on more than 300 workers who arrive from overseas through two “non-immigrant” visa programs. The J-1 visa holders are students participating in a summer work and cultural immersion program, and the H-2B visa holders are adults, often returning from Eastern Europe and Jamaica.
Last summer, deteriorating conditions at Seashore Park prompted complaints against then-owner Taylor Perkins from town departments as well as from Chatham Bars, which was paying about $700,000 for use of the rooms for the season, according to correspondence that became part of bankruptcy court filings.
Perkins, a businessman from Maine who bought the Seashore Park Inn for $5.1 million in 2022, was in a downward financial spiral by late 2023, behind on his mortgage payments and unable to address basic repairs or capital investments such as a required hookup to the town’s sewer line. By August 2024, he had declared bankruptcy to halt the mortgage holder’s plan to auction the three-acre property.
Since Perkins couldn’t make the payments, the court shifted the bankruptcy from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7, which provides for a liquidation of assets to pay off debts. And in December 2024, Patricia and Thomas Kennedy and their son Michael bought the mortgage note from Coastal Heritage Bank. In early March, the Kennedys held an auction. Theirs was the sole bid, at $4.5 million, and they became the new owners of the property.
Orleans Building Commissioner Davis Walters said the town was in touch with the Kennedys even before the property was transferred to let them know what was expected “in terms of health and life safety standards.”
The list of required repairs was long. Last summer’s complaints included a standing pool of sewage in the parking lot from a failed septic system, unreliable air conditioners, broken refrigerators, plumbing failures, and leaks. Parts of the roof also needed repair.
Now, Togo said, “We feel comfortable that the condition of the property will be well established and maintained.”
Michael Kennedy, who is director of property management for Cape View in Harwich, has been overseeing renovation of the property and serving as liaison with town departments. During an April 3 discussion with the board of health, Kennedy said there will be a property manager on site around the clock.
“We recently performed a preliminary safety inspection over there with the fire inspector, and the results were positive,” said Walters last week.
Walters added that inspections are being done on as many rooms as possible. “But sometimes, on a given day, we just can’t get into some of the rooms,” he said, because tenants are in them. “I think they’re in good shape, and luckily they’re going to continue to work on the building and bring systems up to more modern standards.”
An annual inspection of all the rooms at Seashore Park is set for the fall after the rooms are vacated.
Seashore Park Inn presents some unusual challenges, said Walters. It was built in 1963.
“It’s a pre-existing, nonconforming hotel in that there are cooking facilities in each of the rooms,” he said. “That was very concerning to me and to the fire inspector.”
Cooking facilities in motel rooms are no longer allowed under town bylaws, the building commissioner said.
One of the electric stoves caught fire last summer. Failure to provide electricity at levels that would allow proper operation of the kitchenettes was a chronic problem. Walters said the stoves in the units were recently checked, and all were in good condition. It will be important to familiarize the tenants with safety practices related to the cooking facilities, he added.
Kennedy discussed his plan to hook up to the municipal sewer system during his April 3 meeting with the board of health. He said he would have the on-site system pumped daily until hookup could be scheduled.
In a May 5 email, Health Agent Meredith Ballinger said the town had received a complete sewer application packet on April 23. “The town’s engineer has approved the design plans, and the full submission is currently under staff review,” she said.
