9 July—What Litchfield needs is a 20-room boutique hotel in the middle of town. Like a bloody hole in the head. But the town’s going to get one anyway. That’s in addition to the 31-room boutique hotel its developers are calling a bed-and-breakfast, which is right around the corner. A 31-room bed-and-breakfast?!

The real estate deal on the so-called bed-and-breakfast closed some time ago. It’s the adaptive reuse—a fancy expression for repurposing—of what used to be the Rose Haven nursing home. The real estate deal on the boutique hotel closed only last week. It’s what used to be the Litchfield County courthouse.

When the little grey courthouse became too small for all the criminal and civil litigation in the county necessary to support the surfeit of lawyers, it was decommissioned and a considerably bigger monstrosity, which we didn’t want in Litchfield, was built on a semi-derelict Torrington back street. The state sold the Litchfield courthouse to the Greater Litchfield Preservation Trust (GLPT).

Litchfield has for some time been looking to improve and consolidate its offices, so the GLPT came up with a plan to give the courthouse to the town to use as a town hall. The town would then spend about seven million dollars to renovate and adaptively reuse it, according to a plan commissioned by the trust.

It was a great idea. And I still would much prefer to have the courthouse converted to an essential town hall rather than a totally nonessential and extravagant hotel. Highest and best use without question. Problem is, the plan the GLPT presented cut corners in an effort to make it acceptable to the town’s taxpayers. A proper job would have cost at least 15 million—and would have been worth it.

But, to no real surprise, even the seven million was unacceptable to Litchfield voters, who, in the half-century I’ve been living here, have always, invariably, shortsightedly, just plain stupidly been penny-wise and pound-foolish—and not just in building construction and maintenance. (But that’s direct democracy in action and it’s preferable to elected or appointed officials making stupid decisions.)

So a superfluous hotel it will be, with its main entrance in an alley and a rooftop lounge overlooking the town’s singularly unattractive parking lot and public toilet facility.

A few people in Litchfield hope the new boutique hostelries will attract tourists. Many, many Litchfield residents—including you know who—hope otherwise. Because tourists are just an inconvenience, to put it mildly. It’s a given: the fewer tourists, the better for the residents.

I reckon that both boutique transient lodgings will draw most of their business from the parents who can afford to spend $80,000 a year to send their kids to the Forman school as well as executives and their squeezes who will spend anything in the name of true love.

At least the courthouse hotel will put the building on the tax rolls after over 130 years . . .