ISLAND FEVER

In Memory of “Bo” Page

I had two meetings with the late George Page Jr. when I was writing this book about Heritage Bank. The first meeting was in 2000. We met in his restaurant in the late afternoon. It was fashionably dark, and no one was there yet except the two of us and the bartender, busy polishing glasses behind the bar.

Bo was a strong shortish tough-looking man in his fifties who works in close, a humorous blunt-speaking man with many successful hotel and restaurant ventures behind him. He was candid about the Heritage-funded real estate ventures. He didn’t understand Northampton’s love affair with Dick Covell. In l988 or l989, Pat Goggins approached him and invited him up to see Cummington Farms and consider becoming a partner. He looked around, looked at the books, and told Pat that the complex was esssentially valueless: its twenty-two rooms couldn't generate the revenue needed by its extensive infrastructure and debtload.

"It was too big and it was too small" said Page. Later on when it was in bankruptcy, he was approached by Attorney Fred Fierst, who wanted to know if he was interested in buying it. He told him no. Later on Fierst told him that Peter Laird was going to buy it. He said that's nice, good luck or something to that effect.

He told me that in 1987 Charlie Lyons approached Mike Smith to see if Heritage Bank would be interested in financing Wharfside, a collection of shops, restaurants and apartments that Bo Page, Charlie Lyons and a local couple,Maurice and Beverly Poulin, were building in Cruz Bay in St. Johns in the Virgin Islands. Read the full article here.