‘Refreshed’ six-room inn opens for business near Courtright

A six-room motel built several decades ago on the St. Clair Parkway near Courtright is beginning a new life as the Frog Point Inn.

The newly renovated inn is a project of Marinka Molson, an elementary school teacher, and her spouse Shane Molson, who retired from a career in IT.

The single-storey, motor-motel style building sits behind the house where the couple lives, and where Marinka Molson’s parents were previous owners and operators of the motel until that venture paused in 1990s, she said.

Frog Point is an informal name for the section of the parkway shoreline in St. Clair Township where the house and its inn sits, Molson said.

One explanation she has heard is that a nearby pond was the source of frog’s legs served as a regular special years ago in the dining room of a former hotel in the Courtright area.

“It’s just the perfect size,” Molson said about the six-unit inn expected to be a retirement project for the couple.

“We’re kind of empty-nesters so we thought it was a good time to do something like this. It doesn’t have too many rooms so, hopefully, it won’t be too overwhelming.”

Molson and her husband acquired the house and motel in 2019, after her parents had lived there for about 34 years.

The house was built in 1903 and has a mysterious secret room in the basement accessible by a trap door in the floor just inside the front door.

Molson said her parents discovered the room, and a crate holding old bottles of liquor in it, some years ago. The St. Clair Township riverfront was a notorious rumrunner’s zone during prohibition.

The six-room building was added behind the house soon after the Second World War to house farmhands and later the rooms were rented out to travelers and out-of-town laborers who helped to build local industries.

It was known as the Frog Point Motel in the 1980s.

The Molsons stripped down the motel and updated it with new interiors, including updating the bathrooms in each room (and adding heated bathroom floors), to create the Frog Point Inn which just recently opened for business.

“It has been our little project,” Molson said. “My husband is pretty handy, but we’ve also had the help of electricians, and things like that, to renovate the building.”

“It’s the same footprint but it has been refreshed.”

They held a “soft opening” in the fall hosting friends and relatives so they could walk through cleaning and refreshing the rooms, Molson said.

Her husband’s 35 years working in IT is providing useful. For example, a pin number unlocking the room door is sent to guest’s phone.

The inn has a website, frogpointinn.ca.

Molson said a future project her husband is thinking about is adding a charging station for electric vehicles.

Molson said she was just starting at Western University when her parents moved to the house at Frog Point.

After university, she went to work in public relations in Mississauga, Vancouver and then in Manhattan for 14 years before returning to the Sarnia area and switching careers.

Molson is still teaching at a nearby school, but this is the first experience in the hospitality industry for both her and her husband.

“We’ve had a few people stay already who were here for hockey tournaments in Mooretown,” she said.

“We’ve had a couple of inquiries for space over the summer for guests coming for weddings.”

They also hope to tap into providing rooms for construction workers drawn to the area for industry shutdowns and capital projects.

The makers of Crown Royal Canadian Whiskey announced plans to build a nearby distillery which should attract workers looking for somewhere to stay during construction, Molson said.

It’s also close to Corunna for folks coming to the area to visit family and friends there, she said.

“It is a beautiful spot,” Molson said. “We’re on the river – there’s a beautiful view.”

The property includes land on the river shoreline, just across the parkway, with a gazebo where guest can sit and enjoy the view, or take a dip in the water.

There are farm fields behind the Inn and spot guests can sit and enjoy a campfire, or use a barbecue available for them.

“We hope to have bikes because we have the beautiful St. Clair River Trail that runs right in front of us and it goes on for miles and miles,” she said.

Molson said they’ve made connections with local companies, including a nationwide hotel linen supplier in the area, a nearby furniture maker, and Great Lakes Refill, a Sarnia-based company, supplying shampoo and soup to refill dispensers in the bathrooms.

Even the art hung the rooms is by a local photographer, Barnbird Photography.

“Everybody we’ve approached as newbies in the industry has been so helpful and encouraging,” she said. “It really has been an exciting adventure.”

“We’re looking forward to getting busier as the shutdowns start and as people start traveling for the summer.”

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