Oxbow Resort owner buys Berkshire Pizzeria and former Otters restaurant in Charlemont

CHARLEMONT — For a little over a year, Travis DeCere of Cape Coral, Florida, has been making trips to Charlemont to work on renovating the formerly vacant Oxbow Resort Motel into a combination of traditional motel rooms and workforce housing.

During one of his first trips to town, he met Greg Rowehl, who owned Berkshire Pizzeria with his wife, Gaby, and who, after 11 years of running the restaurant on the Mohawk Trail, was looking to retire and sell the business. DeCere said at the time he didn’t have the bandwidth to take on another project.

But now that the Oxbow’s apartments are up and running and the motel is nearly open, DeCere, alongside his business partner and family friend Colleen Brady, is prepared to take on another challenge. So, they bought the pizza shop.

“I met him here at the restaurant one night, and one of the first things he said when he walked up to the table is, ‘Do you want to buy a pizza shop?’ and I just kind of laughed,” DeCere recalled. “I said, ‘I think I’ve got my hands full right now,’ but I spend a lot of time here, eating the food and getting to know the staff.”

He kept thinking about the pizzeria during his visits to Charlemont to work on the Oxbow, and during his trips back home, he would talk about it with Brady, his mother’s best friend, who owns a few food trucks in Florida and has decades of experience in the food industry.

DeCere said the two buildings at the back of the Oxbow property on Route 2 are now fully occupied by extended-stay, month-to-month tenants, and he expects to obtain a permit to open the front building as a motel soon, potentially this month. This will give him more time for the pizzeria, although Brady has moved to Charlemont and is staying at the Oxbow to manage the day-to-day operations of the restaurant.

“Our two back buildings are fully occupied. All we’re waiting on now is approval on our fire sprinkler plan and we’ll have our official permit issued for the front motel,” DeCere said. “We were successful with the town Planning Board; actually, the town really rallied behind us.”

Last week, DeCere and Brady closed on the sale and purchased the pizza shop through Berkshire Equity LLC for $330,000. Thursday was their first day in charge behind the counter. DeCere said he would like to paint the interior, change out the seating, expand the ice cream bar to include hard ice cream and build a full bar on the back deck.

“We’re gonna pursue a liquor license so we can open up a full bar and have live music on weekends on the outdoor deck in back,” DeCere said.

He added that the giant map of Manhattan that has adorned the wall of the dining room will be leaving, as Greg Rowehl wanted to keep it. In its place, he and Brady would like to find a local artist to paint a mural of scenes representing the region.

DeCere and Brady intend to expand the pizzeria’s hours so it will be open seven days a week. Beginning Feb. 26, the restaurant, which is currently open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday through Sunday, will be open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sundays. DeCere said expanding the hours will allow them to better serve skiers coming from Berkshire East Mountain Resort.

“On Sundays, skiing lets out at 4, so we get slammed from 4 to 7 on Sundays, but on Thursday, Friday and Saturdays, skiing doesn’t close till 9, so right right now we’re missing that opportunity for the end of ski night,” DeCere said.

Brady, who DeCere described as an excellent chef who’s proud of her food, said she only plans to make a few changes to the menu, including changing the seasoning for the burgers, and switching the chicken tenders from frozen to fresh chicken that will be cut, breaded and cooked in-house. The pizza will stay the same, but she may explore adding a deep dish option in the future.

“People couldn’t get enough of my burgers down in Florida, so I’m gonna bring up the same concept that I had there for years,” Brady said. “I’m excited to add my touch to some of the food.”

Brady is also hoping to add pasta to the menu, featuring spaghetti, lasagna and Alfredo options with homemade sauces. She added that they will keep the popular Charlemont chips, which are made in-house.

Brady, who has spent the last few decades living in Florida, said she is a big fan of Hallmark movies and fell in love with the small-town charm of Charlemont and the neighboring hilltowns when DeCere brought her to visit the restaurant.

“He brought me up for the first time in December. We came in here, we walked around and then drove around town, and it’s kind of like going to look at puppies. You can’t not get a puppy when you go to look at puppies,” Brady said jokingly.

She has been living in Charlemont for about two weeks now and said moving here in the winter was the right call, although she will need to invest in more winter clothing.

“I like the small-town feel,” she said. “Living in Florida as long as I have, coming up in the wintertime is probably the right thing for me. … I think it was time for a change.”

In addition to Berkshire Pizzeria, DeCere also recently acquired the former Otters restaurant property adjacent to the Oxbow for $250,000. DeCere said he has been cleaning up the space and will be seeking a tenant to open a restaurant there.

“Our hope is to find just an excellent tenant for the community that’s going to come in and build out a great full-service restaurant, bar [and] entertainment venue there that can provide something for the community,” DeCere said.

The space at 1745 Route 2 offers 6,680 square feet and has a full kitchen, bar and stage. It is listed on the commercial real estate website LoopNet as immediately available, with negotiable lease terms and rent of $6.29 per square foot or approximately $42,017 per year.

While DeCere seeks a tenant for Otters, he and Brady will continue working to renovate Berkshire Pizzeria, and expand its hours and menu, while honoring the Rowehls’ legacy.

“We’ve already started on some interior refreshing. We’re going to do a full paint job, upgrade some of the seating. We’d like to, by the summer, have a full functioning ice cream set-up,” DeCere said. “We’re just continuing on the legacy that Greg and Gaby have built here. With 454 reviews and over four and a half stars, obviously they’ve been doing something right for quite a while, and we want to take that and run with it.”