Madison’s old Crescent Motel is being renovated and is for sale for $2.5 million

MADISON — During hot summers in the 1960s, neighborhood children paid 50 cents to swim in the motel’s cement pool. Later, an antique store on the motel grounds held estate sales.

Now the historic Crescent Motel on Route 1 is up for sale for the second time in two years, this time for $2.5 million after its new owner, a local developer, completely renovated the old building.

George MacLauchlan of Madison purchased Crescent Motel and Antiques in 2023 for $900,000 from the estate of Louisa LoBello, who owned it for about 50 years before dying in 2022. According to her obituary, LoBello had been a professional ballroom dancer in New York before moving to Madison.

There are a few vacant spaces in the Crescent, and three retail units are unoccupied. All seven one-bedroom apartments in the motel and the apartment upstairs are rented on a monthly basis. Three of the four office spaces are also occupied, according to MacLauchlan.

And while the motel’s original neon sign is still there, MacLauchlan, who worked as a home builder on the coast, made many improvements to the property. The original house on the property was built in 1812 and expanded, and an addition was built in the 1970s, according to land use records.

MacLauchlan cut down seven large, mature trees, over four feet in diameter, because they were encroaching on the structure with their roots growing into the decking, he said, adding: “The insurance company didn’t want to insure me because the trees were overhanging the building.”

The previous contractor did most of the work himself, except for the electrical and plasterboard, MacLauchlan said.

“We renovated every room, new plasterboard, new plumbing, new electrics, new furniture, new toilets, new sinks, TVs, showers… a new roof,” he said.

Cheryl Cook, a RE/MAX agent and broker, added, “They replaced all the hardwood floors. They cleared the entire 1.9-acre property all the way around and on both sides.” Cook said there was a lot of interest in the motel.

MacLauchlan said he was selling it as an investment because he was in his 70s and wanted to enjoy life.

Running the motel is “a little more than passive income,” MacLauchlan said. “You still have to be here and take care of things.”

The place brings back fond memories for MacLauchlan’s partner, who is in her 70s. She remembers swimming there as a girl 60 years ago for 50 cents a day, he added.

Bruce Beebe, owner of Beebe Marine in Madison, grew up in the East River neighborhood and remembers visiting the motel pool with his mother and brother when he was 6 or 7 years old.

“That’s where I learned to swim. … We went there, spent about half an hour there and then walked home,” he recalled.

Of this recent sale, Beebe said he was “surprised when I saw the price, but in today’s real estate world, everything costs a million dollars, or at least that’s what it seems these days.”

He has a fondness for the place. “It would be nice if it was finished with the further improvements and was really active with people coming and going. I mean, it’s a motel. It’s always been a motel.”

Todd Gould, a lifelong Madison resident whose “grandfather” George H. Gould and father George S. Gould lived in the old house at 60 Boston Post Road in the 1920s and 1930s, said he didn’t know when the motel portion was built. But his father told him a story that suggests the family home was a destination for summer vacationers on a more modest scale.

“When summer came, his brothers Dick Gould and George Gould had to leave their rooms and spend the summer in a tent so they could rent out their rooms,” Gould said, chuckling.