“Belvedere Lenox began with a simple idea: what if hosting could feel easy and still feel extraordinary? We set out to build a space that honors life’s milestones with elegance, while making the planning process feel clear, calm, and even joyful. From intimate gatherings to full wedding weekends, Belvedere was built to offer options. The kind that don’t box you in, and don’t overwhelm. Our design is thoughtful, our approach is personal, and our space is both refined and flexible—a true reflection of the people who gather here.”
— Belvedere Lenox website
Purpose-built and designed for gathering
Tucked in a pocket behind Church and Main, Belvedere Lenox sits amidst the shops, lodging, and restaurants that put Lenox on the map, while offering iconic mountain views and a “quiet backyard” vibe. The venue, which opened earlier in 2025, was also “made for hosting, not adapted for it” by experts with deep experience in the art (and challenges) of hospitality, allowing it to accommodate all kinds of celebrations and gatherings. These qualities enable Belvedere to offer something rare: a clean slate that’s “timeless, walkable, and ready to be made your own” (no tent needed).
The folks behind Belvedere have spent their lives behind the scenes—running kitchens, designing spaces, welcoming guests. “This is a purpose-built event space, with all the details (both seen and behind the scenes) sorted out,” says Scott Shortt, general contractor/interior designer and managing partner/operator for Belvedere Lenox. The former renovator and proprietor of the Kemble Inn (a Lenox legacy) is well-versed in both transformations and hospitality.
Shortt cites a few of Belvedere’s many amenities: “We have built-in sound, projection, and lighting. The ceiling is made of acoustically transparent fabric with insulation behind it to remediate the reverberations that make it impossible to have a conversation in so many places. We have fast fiber-optic internet and can provide 900 amps of power with no circuit breaker trouble, so it’s very conducive for the hospitality professionals who work behind the scenes to make events here memorable for host and guests. There’s a professional kitchen designed for culinary service, and the best bar set-up anywhere—with 14 tap/sinks to maximize efficiency—plus a bar lounge with modern AV.”
The upstairs space also offers flexible seating arrangements to accommodate up to 130 guests or up to 280 people for a cocktail party spanning two floors (you can access the 3D floor plans after booking), with seamless transitions between the indoor and outdoor event areas.
Solving problems by discipline, over time
Shortt is a master of the kind of behind-the-scenes details and calculations events coordinators appreciate—expertise that grew out of high-stakes problem-solving roles with high-profile companies. “I learned from experience that it may take hard work, but there’s not a lot that can’t be solved by discipline over time,” he states.
“I also had some very good mentors in my life,” Shortt acknowledges. Growing up in Ontario, he participated in a government-funded program that provided $3,000 no-interest loans to high school students at the beginning of the summer, as long as they used the funds for an entrepreneurial endeavor and repaid the loan by summer’s end. “Lots of young people did interesting things,” he notes. “At 17, I launched my own graphic design business, which evolved to Intonex—a digital advertising agency with 12 full-time employees. I sold it when I was 25.”
In his early twenties, Shortt met Vic Fedeli, one of his most significant mentors, in North Bay, Ontario. “There were two places that jointly monitored all of the North American airspace at that time; one was in the U.S. and the other was North Bay Air Base,” he explains. When, as part of its downsizing efforts in the mid-1990s, the Canadian government closed the base and relocated monitoring facilities, Fedeli created Air Base Property Corporation (ABPC) to take over and manage the facilities. He chaired the nonprofit and developed a strategy to market the facilities to businesses worldwide in exchange for covering facility expenses and creating jobs. Shortt worked with Fideli and the ABPC to transform the base’s assets into a major aerospace hub that attracted even more investments, including a new School of Aviation built by Canadore College.
By his thirties, Shortt was working in banking and finance and was put in charge of a highly confidential seven-year, $5 billion IT outsourcing deal. Then the outsourcing was cancelled, leaving some underlying challenges in its wake. “Over 10 years, with numerous initiatives, they had spent $60 million trying to fix problems related to how project managers and software engineers worked together. Despite a change-weary organization, senior leaders trusted me to figure it out—or at least try again,” he recalls. “We just did the work, sitting down with people and negotiating. In the end, we had a flow chart of how things worked behind the scenes at the bank that no one had ever seen or understood before that. We launched our work carefully, presenting it directly to 450 people at a time in a movie theater over a week to reach nearly 5,000 people.” Later, senior executive team leaders relocated from a Canadian bank to the CIGNA headquarters in Hartford, Conn., and Shortt joined them. “Every company had the same problem—getting the IT/software people to communicate with stakeholders throughout the company was more challenging than it needed to be.”
Realizing a dream
During his crisis-managing years, he continued to nurture his fantasy of buying an old hotel somewhere in the country, and eventually began looking at properties. “I bought Kemble Inn in 2010 and worked on completely renovating it over the next seven years while still working at CIGNA and later at AIG in New York, among other consulting engagements,” he shares, recalling his commuting-to-the-country shuffle, “dodging deer on the drive up to put logs on the fire, and check coats at the inn.”
After successfully restoring the inn, a historic Gilded Age “cottage,” he wondered how he would recover all the money he spent. “It’s hard here in the Berkshires, where our season is mostly weekends,” he admits, noting that roughly 80 percent of the entire year’s income happens from June to October—and 50 percent in July and August alone.
“I wanted to make memories for people, which involved earning a lot less and working a lot more,” he says. After reviewing the financial statements of nearly a dozen prominent small hotels in the Northeast, he discovered that none of them generated a profit from operations. At best, they were long-term real estate investments. That was pre-COVID. “During the pandemic, I decided to get my life back. I sold the inn to Shared Estates in 2022.”
A unique property—and opportunity
“This project came together because space was available in the heart of Lenox. The lower level of the building housed one of the oldest car dealerships in Berkshire County; the upstairs housed Casablanca, a retail space,” Shortt recalls. “I was doing some non-related work for Mr. Davis [Drew Davis, who owns the property], and we discussed the idea of renovating the building as an event space. After two years of planning and construction, we finished the project in December 2024.”
“I designed the space for a diverse and intense-use clientele—a space with built-in efficiency, where you could go from no one at all to a room filled with 150 people in 15 minutes. I wanted lighting to be on dimmers, and the kitchen to have space for everything,” he continues, noting the HVAC system’s enormous capacity. “We installed air ducts high on the walls and along the baseboards, along with mini splits—and each can be set individually to maintain consistent temperatures as the number of people shifts and the doors are left open.”
To date, Belvedere has hosted a diverse range of events, from small-group gatherings and birthday parties to weddings and corporate meetings. “My dream is a pop-up cooking school partnering with Eataly or the Culinary Institute of America for three weeks in the spring and fall,” Shortt says, smiling. Asked about his 10-year plan, he responds, “This is a real business with real expectations. Although we’re just getting started, my hope is that we achieve the plan we laid out before we started our renovations.”
Building a hospitality network with an events focus
“Planning skews toward the seasons (weekends in summer and fall), but you need to have events year-round to achieve your goals and thrive,” Schott acknowledges. To that end, he’s trying to partner with other businesses and service providers to get them to embrace Belvedere as their event space.
“If we could tell the story to corporate meeting planners in a coffee table book, we’d show approximately 1,120 hotel rooms in Lenox and say, ‘Which do you like?’ The compelling thing to pitch to planners is that, in addition to the nearby rooms and dining options available during the off-season, you could also arrange a group tour at The Mount, show them Chesterwood where the statue for the Lincoln Memorial was created, or get a behind-the-curtain look at Shakespeare & Company.”
“The infrastructure here is very rich but not fully utilized year-round,” he recognizes. “A collaborative network is forming, and we’re excited to get organized soon and work together to help each other thrive. Since the social events planners and corporate events planners value different things, it’s important to pitch them separately—and do it regularly,” he says. Turning the wheels a little more, he adds, “If you have an events focus, you can tap into workers from other places (Hudson, Albany) and keep them busy for short stints during the off-season, run shuttles for caterers, and make use of off-season parking.”
If that sounds like mere dreaming, it’s not. “I’m hopeful, not naïve,” Shortt clarifies. “The way the Berkshires at large changes is by focusing on groups and letting them choose their caterers, growers, venues, sites to visit… It’s a concept that needs to grow organically, and the pricing model can’t be one size fits all, but by doing the work to turn the abstract idea into a specific plan, we all would win.”
