My wife and I bought the New Horizon Resort & Lodge in the spring of 2003. We realized when we bought the resort that the buildings were old and needed a lot of work. The Lodge/Restaurant building was built in 1919, the cabins were added from the late 1930s to the 1950s. After a year at the helm of the great ship New Horizon, one thing was clear: there were holes in the ship and it was taking on water. In the fall of 2004 we started to plug those holes.
The beautiful old Lodge building had trusses that were warped and cracked and the screened porch was falling off of the building. The doors were interior wood doors, the windows were single-pane and the 1975 addition to the back—housing the kitchen and shop areas—had an ill-fitting overhead garage door on the north side of the building. We gutted the original tamarack log structure down to bare walls and removed the porch. We built an insulated (R55) crawl space under the new addition in the footprint of the porch. We rebuilt the porch and insulated it, and we added large double-paned sliding glass windows. The new roof was insulated to R35, and the old wood doors and overhead doors were replaced with insulated steel doors. We added an energy-efficient central furnace and air conditioning. All of the lighting was replaced with CFL bulbs. Eventually all of the commercial refrigeration equipment has been replaced with ENERGY STAR appliances, for which we received rebates from our local electric utility.
Beginning in the spring of 2005, we started what would be a three-year upgrade and remodel of our eight cabins and the grounds. The cabin remodel consisted of complete re-wiring, converting to all CFL bulbs, new showers with low-flow shower heads, new sinks, cabinets and counter tops. We replaced the water heaters in each cabin with new on-demand, tankless, propane water heaters. We replaced deteriorating free-standing heaters with energy efficient propane and electric wall heaters, added ceiling fans, better doors and windows, and ENERGY STAR televisions.
Our grounds renovation was quite extensive. In many DNR meetings that I attended, the DNR expressed concern about stormwater runoff into the lake, and the resulting erosion of the shoreline. Years of foot traffic on our hillside created a bad and unsightly case of that. We built a series of six retaining walls and leveled the ground behind them. We added rain gutters to our cabins. This created a beautiful, level picnic area where before there was barren ground with exposed rocks and tree roots. So we now have all but eliminated the runoff into the lake!
In retrospect, we feel that we have completely recreated this resort. The cabins are still rustic and quaint, but more comfortable and appealing. The grounds are now attractive, safe, people-friendly and much more efficient. And now that we have done these things, we continue our efforts with an aggressive recycling program and buy-local campaigns.
Interested in learning more? Visit New Horizon Resort & Lodge’s website or email Chris and his wife.
