The Inns and Outs of the Center Lovell Inn Brouhaha

A few weeks back, there was a feel-good article in the Boston Globe about a couple from the US Virgin Islands who’d won an essay contest. The entry fee: $125. Their prize: a lovely old Maine inn. The innkeeper’s prize: raising her retirement funds (and handing the inn she’d run for 20+ years off to someone in the same fashion in which she’d originally acquired it: via an essay contest).

[Innkeeper Janice] Sage said she hoped to pass along the Center Lovell Inn to someone who envisioned more than a business attachment. She found that bond in an essay that began: “Twelve years ago, we embarked on the journey of painstakingly converting a dilapidated building into a charming guesthouse and restaurant.” (Source: Boston Globe)

The winners seemed perfect: a forty-something couple with one child, originally from New York, hankering (somewhat unimaginably) to get back to the snow and cold, and with a solid track record running a restaurant.

Errrrrr, not so fast,hollered some of those who had entered the contest but hadn’t won. They’re mightily pissed, and believe that they were led to believe that you didn’t have to have any success in the hospitality biz in order to enter. Any old dreamer would do. To some, awarding the prize to Prince and Rose Adams pretty much proves that the contest was rigged. The dreamed and lost brigade has even set up the Center Lovell Contest Fair Practices Commission, which has lodged a complaint with the great State of Maine. As a result, the Maine State Police, who apparently don’t have enough to do handling the opioid crisis and keeping their highways clear of moose, are looking into it.

Exaggeration seems to be something of a hallmark of the group (emphasis mine):

“One of the many allegations against Janice Sage and the contest she sponsored is that the advertising of the contest ... was illegally deceptive and violated consumer-rights regulations, intentionally coercing thousands of people to enter a contest that they never had an actual chance of winning,” said Kelley Prass Collins, who founded the group.(Source: Boston Globe)

“Intentionally coercing”, huh? However baity and switchy the aggrieved contestants may feel, I really don’t’ think that Ms. Sage was standing over any of them, brandishing a frying pan: “Hey, you, you look like you could fresh-squeeze orange juice and change a bed. Enter my contest or else.”

In similar hyperbolic vein, some of the commenters on the articles I’ve seen throw the “s” word around like it’s going out of style:

Many of us believe that the federal government should be involved because this was a scam of epic proportions that fleeced people from all over the U.S. and some foreign countries.

“Scam of epic proportions”, huh? Whistle in the Feds, fit Janice Sage out for an orange jumpsuit, and ask around and see whether Bernie Madoff’s looking for a roommate.

Seriously, folks…

The other “s” word I’ve seen used by commenters to put Ms. Sage down is “spinster.” As if being an older, single woman should subject someone to derision.

Meanwhile, the Maine staties are just focusing on a point of law that says that the outcomes of games of skill can’t be controlled in any part by the operators. This law was set up to protect carnival-goers from the sorts of shady characters who make sure that no bullet from a pellet gun ever gets near a tin duck.

And speaking of guns, the smoking gun in Sage’s hand seems to be her comment that she knew that the Adams’ entry would be the winner the moment she saw it. There’s also a lot of squawk on the part of the losers that the rules seemed to change along the way. At one point, poems were okay in lieu of essays, then they weren’t. People were allowed to resubmit a refined essay, then they weren’t.

One of the big talking points is that winner Prince Adams had written an e-book on how to use GoFundMe to raise money (one tip: use emotion), which to some seems to show that he’s a manipulating con-man, perhaps even suggesting that he was in cahoots with Sage all along.

There’s also plenty of sky-high dudgeon about the handling of a FB page set up for the contest. Sage and her sister-in-law apparently started deleting the negative comments that started accruing – seriously, who wants to be called a ‘scamming spinster” on their very own Facebook page?

So the aggrieved have set up a page of their own where they can feel – their word – “safe”.

Now I understand why they might want a place where they can rant and disparage to their hearts’ contents, but, come on now, they didn’t feel “safe” on the contests page? (Maybe they lost because the judges didn’t think they were tough enough to run a B&B.)

Maybe this will turn out to have been a scam, with the Adams family and Janice Sage conspiring to make sure that the Adams inn-owning dream came true, all funded by unwitting dupes willing to spill $125 and 200 words worth of their guts for the chance of a lifetime. While not incidentally, funding Sage’s retirement. It would sure end up being a lot more interesting a story if this turns out to be the case.

I’m guessing that what happened is that the judges – however arbitrarily and subjectively – picked the Adams’ entry as one of the top ones, maybe even the absolute winner. After all, they wrote quite sweetly while also demonstrating their chops. I suspect that the judges weren’t necessarily looking for someone who’d run an inn or restaurant. Just someone who’d run something. Nice to be a dreamer with a few good muffin recipes, and all. But I believe the judges were local, and would have wanted someone who could keep the Center Lovell Inn going. Janice Sage may well have weighed in with a “they sound perfect.”

We’ll see.