There may be no more picturesque piece of summer in Bemus Point than seeing the Hotel Lenhart’s porch full of people in rocking chairs enjoying a summer breeze off of Chautauqua Lake.

Will that picturesque view of summers gone by endure into the future?

It’s hard to tell.

Two lawsuits filed last week put that future in doubt – but not for the reasons you may think. It doesn’t matter much whether or not state Supreme Court Justice Grace Hanlon agrees that the 2022 purchase of the property is null and void. If the sale is voided, another buyer will likely come forward.

The bigger problem will be financing the project.

It is clear in reading some of the documentation included in the court filings that the couple trying to purchase the historic old hotel did all they could to raise the money to both purchase and then renovate the Hotel Lenhart. Banks balked at a $3.5 million mortgage on a property that then needed millions of dollars of renovations to make the hotel competitive in an age of flagship hotels and the growing short-term rental market on the shores of Chautauqua Lake. In all, four banks had an opportunity to back the project. Three passed entirely, with two citing a shaky economy and one saying a project of that size was outside the bank’s scope of operations. A fourth lender wanted to impose restrictions that likely would have protected the bank’s investment but also would have added an estimated $1.5 million in costs to the project.

Money makes the world go round. Banks balked at the Hotel Lenhart project they were presented with over the past 18 months, which means whoever the next owner is will need to have pretty deep pockets in order to secure the bank financing needed to create a new future for the Hotel Lenhart.

The Hotel Lenhart is a vestige of a time when lakeside hotels were all the rage, much as short-term rentals around the lake are now. We hope the old hotel is able to find a new life before all we’re left with are memories of that grand old front porch and the breezes from Chautauqua Lake on a warm summer’s day.