John May on Facebook Admin · October 10 at 7:22 PM · The bill to sell Mont Chateau had passed the Senate during the 1977 Legislative session. House delegates from Monongalia County, however, opposed the bill, arguing that access to the trail system and the only public beach on Cheat Lake would be eliminated. One local delegate charged that DNR had “purposely let the property run down … and made the property unattractive to the public to encourage the sale.” The bill failed to pass the House. Mont Chateau Beach, from the Morgantown Dominion Post 4/15/1977:
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John May on Facebook Admin · October 12 at 7:31 PM · The bill to sell Mont Chateau had failed to pass the Legislature. Quarry Management had terminated its lease and no other prospective parties could be found to manage the Park. DNR did not want to resume operation due to the prohibitive costs to rehabilitate the facilities. The State had a property that it could neither sell nor operate as a park. There followed some discussion as to repurposing the Lodge for other uses. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Job Corps, for example, had expressed interest in the building but, upon an on-site inspection, the facility was deemed “not large enough to provide the necessary housing room and would be too expensive to convert to uses to suit our purpose.” On June 21, 1977, Governor Jay Rockefeller announced that the Mont Chateau Lodge would be leased to and occupied by the West Virginia Geological Survey, at that time housed in White Hall on the WVU campus and in several leased facilities in the Morgantown area. From the Morgantown Morning Reporter 7/12/1977:
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John May on Facebook Admin · October 7 at 7:35 PM · Unable to generate income from the Park, and given the neglected state of the Lodge, DNR recommended that Mont Chateau be sold. Per the DNR Director, “The public doesn’t support it. It never has been popular since the day it was built.” A resolution to sell the property for not less than $1,000,000 was proposed in the 1977 Legislative session. The rationale given for the proposal was that, “as of late, Mont Chateau operated more as a hotel than a park and did not fit into the scheme of the State Park system because it only had 42 acres that were not suitable for recreational development”. Per the chairperson of the House Parks sub-committee, “It will cost much to upgrade the park in a condition that will not embarrass the State and dim the image of the other State Parks. On the other hand, we do believe the park can be easily sold to the adjoining country club or land developers on Cheat Lake.” From the Morgantown Dominion Post, 1/12/1977:
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DUANE NICHOLS