Innkeepers in Orange partner with Montpelier

ORANGE — In another, not-so-long-ago life, Jay Billie and Elizabeth Goeke ran in the fast lane.

Billie worked for the Gallup Organization in market research; Goeke was founder of Moving Comfort, a women’s athletic-apparel company. They lived in Arlington.

Now, they concern themselves with fluffy towels, homegrown raspberries and tomatoes, and a henhouse full of chickens turning out dozens of eggs a day.

Billie and Goeke traded the bustle of Northern Virginia for the quiet of Orange County, where they transformed a 1910 farmhouse — they’ve been told it was the first in the county with indoor plumbing when it was constructed — into a bed-and-breakfast inn. They married after completing the renovation and are in their second year of operating the Inn at Westwood Farm, less than a mile from Montpelier, the home of James Madison.

“Elizabeth always wanted to open a B&B, and I always wanted to renovate old houses,“ Billie said. “With its proximity to Montpelier, it seemed like a natural fit.“

In light of Montpelier’s recent $24 million restoration, other innkeepers in the area also view it as a natural fit. Billie and Goeke have banded with the owners of seven other nearby inns to form the Inns at Montpelier, a partnership formed in recent years that allows them to pool marketing resources, compete in a cooperative and efficient manner, and attract visitors to this lush slice of Virginia.

“We feel we’re the concierges of Orange rather than our own individual inns,“ said Billie, president of the Inns at Montpelier. “If people come to Orange, they’re going to stay.“

There is much to recommend to visitors about Orange and surrounding areas, starting with Montpelier, which, unlike Mount Vernon and Monticello, has become open to the public only in recent years. The restoration, considered one of the great projects of historic preservation in our time, provides guests a peek at life in the early 1800s for Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution. It also banished the pink stucco from the mansion’s exterior forever.

There are nearby wineries, such as Barboursville and Horton Cellars. The Civil War remains alive and well at sites in Orange, Madison and Culpeper counties. There are art galleries and golf courses, foothills and changing leaves. Picturesque small towns, such as Orange and Gordonsville, offer antiques shops and restaurants of different persuasions, from Orange’s upscale and inspired Elmwood at Sparks to The Hornet’s Nest, a more rustic eatery down the road that features outstanding barbecue, pies and other familiar comfort foods.

And it’s all within a 90-minute drive of Richmond and Washington.

“I think when people think of such a rural community, and that’s really what we are, they’re surprised when they start hearing [what’s here]: ‘Montpelier’s there? Barboursville’s there?‘ “ said Joe Ward, director of tourism for Orange County, whose office is the old train depot in downtown Orange. “For an area this size, we are very fortunate to have such a concentration of legitimate places. You don’t have to stretch to tell their story.“

The Inns at Montpelier is succeeding for a number of reasons, including the partnership it’s developed with the Montpelier Foundation, which manages the area’s major tourist attraction, said Jack North, a member of the Inns at Montpelier, who, with his wife, Pat, owns the Mayhurst Inn, on the outskirts of downtown Orange.

Member inns have seen an increase in the number of guests who discovered the inns through the Montpelier Web site, North said. Conversely, numerous inn guests who didn’t intend to visit Montpelier do so after learning more about the estate while staying at the inns, he said.

The organization is also working because of the unusual relationship member inns have forged with one another, said North, who also is president of the Bed and Breakfast Association of Virginia.

“We share information, and this is very unique in a competitive environment,“ North said. “We really don’t think of ourselves as competitors. Each of our B&Bs is different in some way, and, in some cases, we appeal to different kinds of guests.“

In particular, the inns maintain a shared calendar, letting the other inns know when they have rooms available and when they don’t, and directly referring guests to other inns when they have no vacancies. Rates at the inns range from $45 to $285 per room.

“This sharing of occupancy information is very rare in the hospitality industry, but has proven to be one of the most positive aspects of our organization,“ North said.

Bill Lohmann and Bob Brown are staff writers at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.