Blenheim Reviews Venue Hotel

BLENHEIM - On Wednesday evening, the Blenheim Town Board heard a presentation from Morten Sohlberg, the owner of Blenheim Hill Farm, and Doug Van Deusen from Lamont Engineers on a new potential project.

Blenheim Hill Farm has remained in operation as a destination wedding venue for ten years, and over that time, Mr. Sohlberg has said that they’ve married approximately five hundred couples on the scenic hillside.

“That equates to thousands of guests that come here to experience the beauty of Blenheim,” he said, and presented his plans to build the Blenheim Hill Lodge as a piece of his facility.

If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Mr. Sohlberg has already tried this same idea. In 2020, he noticed the need from travelers and guests for an easy and accessible place to stay and began to set his plans in motion, even going so far as to secure a building permit.

However, before any ground could be broken, COVID-19 delayed and inevitably killed the project due to mounting supply shortages and increased costs. 

In the six years since then, he and his team have been hard at work redesigning what they would like to change, and they’ve come up with a downscaled building.

According to Mr. Van Deusen, who explained the details of the plans, the previously slated forty seven rooms will instead become twenty eight rooms. The Lodge will be two stories tall and use significantly less water and waste water.

“Other than the downscaling, this is virtually the same project as in 2020,” he said.

“We’re trying to build something that is pragmatic but still looks quite beautiful in the setting,” Mr. Sohlberg remarked. “We want to make it upscale in the interior even if the exterior may seem simplistic.”

He further explained that once the hotel’s construction is finished, he plans to have it service the area year-round and will open rooms to both his wedding clientele and the public. 

Once the plans were laid out for the Board to look over, Supervisor Don Airey was the first to respond, saying “I have always supported this project and I have fought for it at every level before. But you have to understand that the Town needs to do its due diligence.”

Elaborating further, he explained that Blenheim has no zoning, no Planning Board, and absent land use regulations, making the jobs of both code enforcement and the Town Board more complex when it comes to approving the project.

Supervisor Airey asked that Mr. Sohlberg be patient with their codes officer as he analyzes every piece of the application over the coming weeks, and requested a motion from the Board that they take their special counsel on as a consultant to make certain they’re not missing anything, to which the Board agreed.

“With all that being said, I haven’t had a lot of pushback or resistance,” Supervisor Airey concluded. “I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that this area really needs more lodging, and I think what you’re doing is great.”