The Northwood Cabins sign and office are seen in Tupper Lake on June 26, 2025. (Provided photo — Brian Burns)

TUPPER LAKE — Eagle-eyed drivers making their way along the state Route 3/30 corridor just east of Tupper Lake may have spotted a blue “For Sale” sign peeking out of the snowbank in front of the Northwood Cabins.

The property is on the market as its current owners, Brian and Renee Burns, decided it’s time to pass the torch, citing a desire to spend more time with their family and fully enjoy retirement. The couple purchased it 10 years ago as a post-retirement project, and have operated it since.

As their kids have recently started families of their own, Brian said that they don’t have the same amount of time to dedicate to the business, especially when commuting back and forth from their winter home near Buffalo.

It’s been a good run, and Brian said they’ll continue stewarding the property until it sells. And once it does, Brian said they’re not going anywhere. The couple has their own residence near Tupper Lake, thanks in part to the opportunity and the means the Northwood Cabins have provided them over the years.

“We’ve built a business, we’ve rehabbed it. Structurally, it’s in a good place,” he said. “We’re doing great as far as occupancy — more than we can handle.”

It’s listed for $425,000 and the listing agent is Jim LaValley of Coldwell Banker Whitbeck. Burns said the property has actually been up for sale for about 18 months now, but the listing was confined to specialty commercial pages and catalogs. He added that they didn’t want to elevate the sale’s profile until they had a chance to inform all of their longtime guests personally throughout the last season.

“We got a chance to say ‘goodbye’ to some very, very sweet people who we’ve gotten to know very well,” he said.

Burns said it’s been tough telling their most loyal guests that they’re not going to host them anymore, at least under their ownership. The cabins are slated to remain closed for the 2026 season, unless there’s a sale and the new owners decide to open it then.

In the meantime, Burns said they’ll continue to care for the property and keep it in good condition, even if the cabins won’t be occupied day-in and day-out.

“Our stewardship is going to continue,” he said. “There’s always work. We’re not going to abandon.”

First built around 1929, the property is nearly 100 years old. While there have obviously been structural upgrades to the cabins in that time, Burns said that when the couple bought it in 2016, they made a deliberate decision to maintain the same historical curbside appeal.

“This property carries so much with it,” he said. “It harkens back to another day.”

Northwood Cabins was honored with the 2025 Preservation Award from Adirondack Architectural Heritage.

Along with the vintage appearance, Burns said their service model was something that’s not too common anymore in today’s lodging: a full concierge service. Burns — himself an Adirondack 46er, avid outdoorsman and licensed guide — said that when guests booked a stay at the Northwood Cabins, he and Renee would offer to help plan out an Adirondack vacation.

He joked that their motto became that they would never recommend a hike, climb, paddle, restaurant or brewery that they hadn’t tested out themselves. And that service didn’t stop during the visit.

He said guests kept coming back over the years because of the service, comfort and strong sense of safety they felt there. In recent years, an increasing trend he noticed was that older members of large families who might be camping nearby at multiple sites in a more rugged setup would stay there at night for the comfort, then regroup and spend much of the daytime with the rest of the group.

“We were always present,” he said. “Even if the office wasn’t open, you could knock on the door. We would answer the phone at night.”

Burns recalled one evening when one guest was overdue from hiking in the remote Seward Range, located on the western edge of the High Peaks and primarily accessed from the Coreys Road in Harrietstown. He drove to the trailhead and began looking, eventually finding the guest in good condition.

“It was inviting someone into your home,” he said. “That’s how we operated it.”

Having grown up in the North Country and spending a lot of his childhood in the Adirondacks, Burns said that it was never lost on him how special of a place it was, and how much it meant to visitors to spend time here.

“We tried to always remind ourselves that every day our guests are there, they’re excited, they’re on vacation,” he said. “This is a place that they’ve driven many hours to, possibly, and may have waited very long to come back to — and we tried never to be blasé about that.”

Over the years, Burns said that just as they treated guests like family, there was often reciprocity, which he said came to be among the most rewarding and cherished aspects of operating the cabins.

“We would see a guest, and they would tell us, ‘Oh, we’re going to be expecting a baby,’ and then come Christmas time, here comes a card addressed to our home address with a picture of the baby,” he said. “All of a sudden, we found ourselves being welcomed into their families.”

On the operating side, Burns said it helped that he and Renee brought different, complementary skill sets to the table. He had previous experience working with home builders and tended to oversee the structural maintenance aspect, while Renee handled the bookkeeping.

He said being able to plan and perform about 90% of the building work there over the years proved immensely important from a business standpoint.

“In the Adirondacks, the building season is so short,” he said. “You’ve got to plan, you’ve got to be on someone’s radar, or you’re going to have to wait.”

Burns said that the 10% or so of work beyond his pay grade was handled dutifully by Tupper Lake contractors. He said having the community behind its back is a large part of why Northwood Cabins have remained successful for so long.

“Whoever takes this over, they’re going to have that advantage right out of the gate,” he said. “They have a community that’s supportive, and you can’t buy that type of thing.”