York Town News
Brown's Old Fashioned Ice Cream to get lease for two more years
By Virginia L. Woodwell
Steve Dunne, who has leased and run Brown's Old Fashioned Ice Cream on the Nubble for the past 15 years, has learned the property's owner will extend his lease for another two years, despite long-standing rumors of pressure to sell the valuable ocean-view property for residential development.
Photo by Virginia L. Woodwell
YORK BEACH - Steve Dunne got some good news last week.
Dunne runs Brown's Old Fashioned Ice Cream, Inc., out at the far end of the Nubble, and on Tuesday, Sept. 12, he got a call from his landlord telling him that his lease, due to expire at the end of this year, would be renewed for another two years.
The landlord is Byron Brown, who started the popular seasonal business with his family 39 years ago. Twenty-one years later he shut it down (though he opened for two weeks in each of the next two summers to keep his license current), but three years after that, in 1991, he began leasing to Dunne.
Dunne has continued the operation, summers and non-stop since, changing little in the formula that's made Brown's a prized local institution. Initially, the Brown family made their own ice cream, and on the premises; Dunne's ice cream is Shain's of Maine, but his building remains the little cottage that the Browns converted to use for take-out service, and the location remains distinguished for its picnic tables, big adjacent parking lot, ocean breezes and stunning ocean views.
Those last elements, however, are what make the lease-renewal significant, for the property would now bring in far more money if sold for residential development than it currently yields in being leased to an ice cream stand.
Under those circumstances, rumors have long been circulating that the sale of the property, and therefore the end of Brown's Old Fashioned Ice Cream, was imminent.
As recently as two years ago, both Dunne and Brown went public to squelch those rumors, stating that they were bound by a five-year lease, which both intended to honor.
This week, however, Dunne reported that, with the five-year lease due to expire at the end of 2006, Brown had told him that he was, indeed, considering selling.
Tuesday's news that he has decided to continue leasing for another two years, therefore, came as a welcome relief.
Brown did not reveal reasons for reaching the decision he did, Dunne said, and Dunne did not press him on the matter.
Whatever the reasons, Dunne added, "I'm just very thankful."
Brown himself winters in Florida and was not immediately available for comment.
For Dunne, a part of his relief has to do with the fact that Brown's Old Fashioned Ice Cream is an example of the traditional "mom-and-pop" local and privately-owned enterprise whose existence is increasingly threatened by burgeoning national, international and corporate interests and the pressures of residential development in locations where the ocean in literally a stone's throw away.
In Brown's case, the local connections go broad and deep.
Byron Brown and his wife, Betty, along with his parents and two brothers, bought their Nubble property some 50 years ago, when there were only about five cottages on Cycad Avenue running up the center of the peninsula, and when almost the only building obstructing the view in all directions at the ocean end was a big Coast Guard station across the street. The little business they began there in 1967 involved not only Byron and Betty Brown as a husband-and-wife team, but their children, Ann, then 17, and Peter, then 13.
Dunne entered the local scene through his marriage to Phyllis Fox, proprietor of Fox's Lobster House, opposite Sohier Park and very close to the Nubble Light. A civil engineer who'd worked on major construction sites throughout New England - including Fox Run Mall in Newington, N.H. - and who'd even owned property and lived in York for a time, he'd returned to Connecticut at the time he met Fox while skiing in 1990.
It was Jeff Shain, of Shain's of Maine, who suggested to Dunne that he lease Brown's facility and resurrect the ice cream stand. In that process, Fox's expertise at the seasonal food business proved invaluable, and now the husband-and-wife team runs their two businesses, one located right around the corner from the other, in some ways that are mutually interdependent.
On a good summer's day, his own business, Dunne reported, now serves between 1,000 and 1,500 customers.
There, Dunne also noted, the lease renewal will permit him to continue offering seasonal employment to between 30 and 40 young people, from York and beyond, each year. Illustrating one of the hallmarks of the owner-run business, he takes a personal interest in each, with the result that many staff return to serve him, year after year: Danielle Durgin, for example, a Brown's manager whose full-time job is now as a special education teacher in Eliot, and Eric Larose, now in his mid-20s, who's worked at Brown's all through high school and college and beyond, and who still works there on Sundays, and Ted Mottola, 25, who has also worked, summers, at Brown's for 12 years, and who still works there on Saturdays.
Faced with the prospect of losing the ice cream stand - and lured by the dream of making enough money to buy the property themselves - Dunne and Fox, while continuing to run their respective businesses, recently also each became real-estate agents. Billed as "The Fox & Dunne Team," they're working for Coldwell Banker Yorke Realty and specializing in luxury homes in York.
Dunne, however, doesn't see purchase as an imminent option for himself, short of finding what he termed "a golden goose." He declined to speculate about the property's market value but reported that its 1.25 acres, split between front and back properties and including the business' big parking lot, are currently assessed by the town at $1.4 million.
No lease has yet been drawn up and signed, but Dunne expressed confidence that that would happen. Brown, he said, has always proved "a man of his word."
For his part, he said, "I've put heart and soul into the business for 15 years and would like to keep it going. People do enjoy themselves here."
Brown's Old Fashioned Ice Cream remains open on weekends through Columbus Day, on Fridays from 1 to 8 p.m., and on Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 8 p.m.
