Lenox innkeepers add LakeHouse in Lee to portfolio

Pair drawn to sunsets, views at property

By Tony DoBrowolski

LEE — The owners of the Cornell Inn in Lenox have added a second historic Berkshire lodging establishment to their local portfolio, one with spectacular views that include Berkshire sunsets.

Kurt Inderbitzin, and his wife, Indrani, who have owned the Cornell Inn since January 2021, recently purchased the historic LakeHouse Inn on Laurel Street in Lee for $3.4 million, according to documents filed at the Middle Berkshire Registry of Deeds in Pittsfield.

The couple, the sixth owners of the 119-year-old inn, have also obtained a $1.7 million mortgage on the property with Cambridge Trust Co. of Cambridge, according to registry documents.

Built in 1903 and originally known as the Laurel Lake House, the 7,937-squarefoot inn has 17 beds and 16-and-a-half bathrooms and is situated on 2 acres that includes 500 feet of waterfront space on Laurel Lake. The inn itself is located on a cliff that looks out on the lake to the west, making it a perfect location for viewing Berkshire sunsets.

Those views are the reasons the couple decided to invest in the property,

“I just absolutely love it,” Inderbitzin said. “My wife and I both just think it’s one of the most beautiful settings you can have anywhere.

“It’s really remarkable for a hotel to have 500 feet of lakefront property with western sunsets on an undeveloped lake anywhere,” he said. “The beauty of it just kind of grabbed us both.”

The inn’s previous owners, Maggie Barry and Cody Galvin of Erinterrafirma LLC of Pittsfield, completely renovated the property after purchasing it for $585,000 from TD Bank seven years ago. They also changed the name from the Inn at Laurel Lake to the LakeHouse Inn

“They did a pretty amazing job renovating it,” Inderbitzin said. “They pretty much gutted it and brought it up to modern code.”

The only tinkering the new owners may do is add a deck to provide outdoor dining.

“Our goal is ultimately to let people dine outside by the lake at some point,” Inderbitzin said. “Right now the building’s set back about 50 feet from the lake. Our goals would be to set up some kind of deck to let people actually sit lakeside to eat their breakfast and possibly other meals at some point.”

Before Barry and Galvin bought the inn, TD Bank had taken possession of the property after the Inn at Laurel Lake was raided in January 2012 as part of an investigation into alleged prostitution in the area. TD Bank took over the inn after the financial institution had failed to sell it at an open auction.

Inderbitzin, who is originally from the Washington D.C area and lived in Los Angeles before coming to the Berkshires, is vaguely aware of this previous incident.

“I heard that this was a brothel before,” he said. “What it’s gone through in the past and the various incarnations of it is colorful and interesting but it has nothing to do with what happens today.”

Inderbitzin, who had traveled to New

England to ski while growing up, founded and ran a digital entertainment company in California and a school for film and media in India before buying the Cornell Inn for $1.9 million two years ago, according to his LinkedIn page.

He holds an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, and a master in fine arts degree in screenwriting from the University of New Orleans.

“Me and my wife wanted to run a business in a different way than we had seen it run before,” Inderbitzin said, when asked why he decided to leave his former professional life for the lodging business in the Berkshires.

“We’re really focused on kindness to employees and customers,” he said. “I know that sounds hokey and like an advertising slogan, but it’s really not. We really try to be an environment that helps people where they want to go in life, helps them to move forward, and helps them to deal with their issues in a positive way. We focus on that.”

“Our goal is to kind of bring that culture and that marketing to the LakeHouse,” he said.