GREENFIELD — When the Brandt House Bed and Breakfast went on the market, Georg and Angela Burwick saw an opportunity they couldn’t pass up.
So the couple, who own the Old Mill Inn in Hatfield, decided to buy the iconic house on Highland Avenue for $750,000. Although they said they don’t have any major changes planned, the Burwicks are excited about the chance to expand their business to a new location they hope will offer new opportunities.
“We’ve owned the Old Mill Inn in Hatfield for almost three years and we were looking for expansion ideas for growing our business, and we saw the Brandt House was for sale and decided that might be the next opportunity for us,” Georg Burwick said.
The couple moved from California to Massachusetts in 2013 to purchase the inn, which Burwick said they had talked about doing for years. He said he had been working in arts administration on the West Coast, while his wife was a midwife.
“It was just one of those things that you think about and go, ‘This might be a more intimate way of getting to know people.’ You interact with people all the time and I felt myself just drawn more and more to customer service and hospitality, and it was also the desire to own our own business together as a couple,” Burwick said. “This was really something we wanted to do, and when the opportunity kind of presented itself to move away from California and move across the country, we definitely snapped it up.”
The experience turned out to be better than either of them expected, and after completing a number of different projects at the Old Mill Inn — including adding a coffee shop in 2014 — Burwick said he and his wife wanted to take on something new.
When the Brandt House was put on the market, the couple jumped at the opportunity.
“It just gives us a whole new opportunity in terms of venue, place, location,” Burwick said, adding the Brandt House’s proximity to downtown is “drastically different” from the Old Mill Inn’s rural location.
The Burwicks took over the bed and breakfast about two weeks ago and said they’re not planning on changing much, except for a handful of minor renovations and improvements to make the guest experience more comfortable.
“A lot of people have put a lot of care and time into it, so it’s already a great platform to start off with, so improving is just kind of putting little touches here and there,” he said, adding, “We’re just slowly taking it over. It has an excellent staff that we’ve adopted from the previous owner.”
Those small renovations include upgrading the electrical system in the house, updating some television sets and adding artwork to the walls — “just little things,” as Burwick put it.
And because the Brandt House is just a two-minute drive from the Amtrak station, the Burwicks hope to market it more to travelers.
“It’s an icon within Greenfield,” he said. “It definitely has a name and a reputation and I think we definitely are looking to continue on that reputation, to expand on quality of service.”
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