Nantucket Current | Cliffside Beach Club is for sale after almost…

The Currie family, which has owned and operated Cliffside Beach Club on Nantucket’s North Shore since 1958, has put the iconic property up for sale, informing its staff and club members earlier this week that it is accepting offers for the century-old facility located between Steps Beach and The Galley restaurant.

According to a message sent by Robert Currie to Cliffside Beach Club members, the family has hired global commercial real estate firm CBRE to handle the private sale. The asking price has not been publicly disclosed.

The Currie family has owned the property for nearly 70 years and oversaw the expansion of the existing club to include a hotel in the 1970s and several facility expansions in the 1980s.

In Robert Currie’s message to members, the CurrentHe spoke about his family’s connection to the island and the property, while stressing that it will be “business as usual” for the club’s members and guests this summer.

“After 66 years and three generations of family ownership, the Currie family has decided to consider selling Cliffside Beach Club,” Currie wrote. “As you can no doubt imagine, this was a decision that had been on our minds for some time and was not an easy one to make. This property was our family home for decades. We raised our children here and made lifelong friendships here. It is no exaggeration to say that this property has shaped our lives in indescribable ways.”

Currie informed members that while CBRE would begin contacting potential buyers immediately, he expected the process to take “several months” and that there was “no guarantee” that a sale would occur.

“The usual operations of the beach club and our accommodation operations will continue without changes until the end of the season,” Currie wrote.

Leading the sale of Cliffside Beach Club on behalf of the Currie family is Robert Webster, Vice Chairman of CBRE Hotels Institutional Group, whom the company describes as one of the best hotel brokers in the world. It was Webster who Current Call Cliffside Beach Club on Friday to answer any questions you may have about the sale.

“This has been family owned for a long time and all family businesses ultimately make decisions that are best for the family,” Webster said. “They all sat down and realized now is the time to look at options. We don’t know if there will be a sale or not… We’ll see what options are in the market.”

Webster stated that he expects the property to continue to operate as a beach club and hotel, but acknowledged that there would be few buyers for such a unique property with its history as a beach club and hotel.

“It’s a very curated process,” Webster said. “It’s not going to be a widely marketed product… There’s no price suggestion. We’re going to do some pricing in the market. We’ll see where we land.”

A property like Cliffside Beach Club is for sale “once in a lifetime,” Webster added, stressing, like Currie, that a sale could take months, if it ever goes through.

“It could take well into next year,” Webster said. “It depends on the process and the interest and the level of interest. Those aspects are an issue in any transaction and pricing is part of it, but speed and security are also part of it. We are trying to find a balance and we will be very careful about doing that. We know how important this asset is to the island, the people and the customers.”

The 6.5-acre property on the north shore was first used as a beach club in 1924 and named after the owner/manager. The original pavilion from that year still exists.

“On warm summer days, the pavilion was filled with guests elegantly dressed in silk suits and top hats,” says a 1989 Cliffside Beach Club brochure in the Nantucket Historical Association archives. “At that time, arriving at the beach in a bathing suit was unthinkable. In the early years, the more than four hundred wooden changing rooms were rented twice a day to keep up with demand.”

The club was privatised in 1949 and bought by the Currie family nine years later.

“In 1970, the transition from the Beach Club to the Beach Club Hotel began with the construction of several rental apartments,” Currie wrote to guests in 1989. “In 1983 and 1984, a limited number of hotel rooms and suites were added… All furnishings, including beds, tables, vanities and interior doors, were designed and built by Nantucket craftsmen.”

Over the three generations that the Curries owned Cliffside Beach Club, they added 22 hotel rooms and suites, a fitness and spa area, a private bar and café, and a pool area.

The nearby property at 41 Jefferson Avenue, across Galley Beach and the public road — originally developed as a private beach club in the 1930s — is also for sale and listed by The Mazer Group at Compass. The property is smaller — just 0.94 acres — but includes a four-unit main beach house, two detached cottages, two garages, an entry courtyard/garden and a large Belgian block parking lot. Like Cliffside Beach Club, it is part of the only residential/commercially zoned property on the entire North Shore of Nantucket. Compass has marketed its potential uses as a residential complex, luxury boutique hotel, exclusive private club, as well as “a joint venture with other lodging establishments on the island, offering the private swimming beach and large beachfront residences they lack or conversion to condominiums.”

In May, Compass reduced the original asking price of $39 million for 41 Jefferson Avenue to $29.9 million. The property has been on the market for over two years.