From Mexican Cardboard House to Renovating Milford
Bill Rosado has come a long way from the tree under which he was born in the Yucatan. The only running water in his cardboard house ran beneath his hammock, alongside ants carrying leaves that he watched with interest. But his interests have taken him elsewhere, and he wants to bring Milford with him. So he recently bought the most distinctive buildings in the borough, aiming to highlight history and fuel the town’s future prospects. He began with the Tom Quick Inn and went on to Forest Hall, Milford Theatre, Laurel Villa, Rock Ridge Inn and, on Sept. 17, he acquired the Hotel Fauchere, along with 403 Broad and the spa next door. He is negotiating other properties, he said this week.
“I’ve lived here for 48 years and feel the potential isn’t used,” he said. “It’s not going to become Silicon Valley or a place to make widgets. It was a hub of hospitality, and the town’s layout and topography are right for that. People can enjoy walking around town, hiking and the river. I want to make opportunities for youth, so they can stay here. So I put my money where my mouth is. I always had my eye on the Tom Quick Inn, so finally I acquired it from the lender.”
He sees not only wedding venue potential in the ballroom that can hold 200, but also plans virtual golf in the basement that had been a sports bar.
“Other places have indoor water parks,” he said. “We’ll have four cubicles with screens. You can play 18 holes on virtual Pebble Beach, and if you’re a member, you can play any time of day or night. Some times will be open to the public.”
Already the front porch, flower festooned under a new red striped awning, is busy with diners. Across the street, at the ARTery Gallery, Libby Cotterill said she had visited the inn, worried that the mural her grandfather had painted of cowboys lassoing a bear would be discarded by the new regime, but no, it was still there. More threatening to Cotterill, who is ARTery director, was Rosado’s purchase of Forest Hall, where the Artery is one of several first floor shops.
“He could have jacked up the price,” she said.
But no, he assured her that all could continue as they had.
“I want to bring back Forest Hall’s beauty and notoriety,” said Rosado. “It’s where the environmental movement began, where the U.S. Forest Service started. I have top historians and architects to restore it and bring in the French influence.”
Two-term Pennsylvania governor Gifford Pinchot had begun the forest service, educating members in Forest Hall. His descendant, Peter Pinchot, has said that the first Pinchot to arrive in Milford had been a soldier in Napoleon’s army and fled to America after their defeat at Waterloo.
Rosado also has plans for Forest Hall’s second floor.
“We’ll have weddings and events, and we’ll advertise on a national level,” he said. “I want to preserve and enhance what has made the town beautiful.”
That includes the arts. Central to his interests and his grand plan is the Milford Theatre. He bought it from Jerry Beaver, who had launched the Black Bear Film Festival but moved to Florida several years ago.
“It will be a neighborhood friendly theater, with a different theme for one weekend each month,” Rosado said, whether, “The Great Gatsby,” or “Grease,” displayed in clothes, food, drinks and music.” Art groups can show their work, and we’ll have top entertainers.”
Beth O’Neil, who grew up in Milford and then produced films and theater productions in New York, is back to apply her skills locally, as Rosado’s arts and entertainment director.
Singer songwriter Vanessa Carlton, a Milford native with a platinum-selling album behind her, will perform on Nov. 20. Rosado says the show is sold out.
He is in the process of long needed replacement of theater seats and sound, heating and air conditioning systems, as well as adding a bar, to be ready for the Black Bear Film Festival. Among the films to be shown there will be a documentary he made about the close relationship between twin sons of a friend Rosado met while attending Delaware Valley High School. One twin became a baseball player with the Chicago Cubs. The other had Down Syndrome.
“I always had a thirst for expressing myself with documentaries. When I see a story that moves me, I want to make a documentary,” said Rosado.
Mexico to Milford at 14
At the 2018 Black Bear Film Festival, Rosado showed his documentary, ‘Living Treasures of the Yucatan: Women and the Mayan Traditions.” The women, he said, reminded him of his mother, who made a meager living washing clothes after the death of his father, who had been a street vendor, selling small figurines of Jesus. Because of the family’s poverty, Rosado was born under a tree by his house, aided by a midwife, he said.
In his documentary, a 71-year-old woman made chocolate over a fire, and a 94-year-old woman gave a maternity massage to a pregnant teen who had her first child at 13, as is still common there, Rosado said. The masseuse, who only charged $1.50 and was sometimes never paid, wore rags, so Rosado bought her clothes, he said, noting that now women get educated.
He was the youngest of five children and only two when his father died. In 1974, days before he turned 15, he went to live with his older brother, Felix, who had gone to the U.S. and was living in Milford with his wife. Rosado went to a Catholic high school for a year.
“At 15, I was rebellious,” he said. “I didn’t have the right clothes, and I didn’t speak the language. I wanted to go back to Mexico, but my sister-in-law saw things in me I didn’t know. She said, ‘Give me three months. You’re more American than you think.’”
American manners took him by surprise.
“I loved the civility of American people. I went to a museum, and there was no pushing and shoving. People entered in a single file line. In Mexico, whoever pushes and shoves gets in.”
His sister-in-law taught him to stay focused.
“You focus on the job of the moment, and whatever you start, never leave the project unfinished,” he recalled her saying. “I’ve delayed projects but gone back. Sometimes it needs to be the right time.”
He learned English within a year and went on to college on a soccer scholarship, but left after a semester. By the time he was 20, he was married. He took a job selling cars.
“I enjoyed the self-preservation of it,” he said. “There’s no limit to the salary. The harder you work, the greater the reward.”
At 29, in 1989 he bought his first dealership, and would for a time have 12 of them, located from Scranton to Allentown and Middletown. He bought Milford Chrysler in 1991, but during the recession, he sold seven of his dealerships.
Meanwhile, he said of his Milford property ventures, “This is a project I’ve been dreaming of for years.”
He plans to bring Mexican culture to Laurel Villa with a Mexican restaurant, La Posada, “approachable but high end,” he said.
Events will be held in the side garden.
As for 554 Route 6 and 209, where the River Rock Inn was, “The Inn at the Edge of the Forest will be a large barbecue place with a pavilion for events and miniature golf in the yard,” said Rosado. “I’d like to bring in business from elsewhere.”
For the Fauchere, Rosado will bring in a French chef from Pine Bush, who has worked at high end French restaurants, to provide upscale French food for the Delmonico room. He will also change the menu at Bar Louis.
In November, Rosado’s brother Felix died at 80 of Covid-19, but Rosado still has a life in Mexico. He has expanded the house where he grew up in Merida, in the Yucatan, and he put a gate on the property. The tree by where he was born is still there, he said.