The two lifelong best friends recently purchased the cabins from longtime owners Brian and Renee Burns. As the property sat on the market, it looked for a time as if the cabins might not have opened for this season, a heartache for the legions of loyal longtime families who have built large swaths of their summers staying there and exploring Tupper Lake and the surrounding Adirondacks.

As serendipity would have it, Northwood is slated to open this season without interruption, with the duo officially announcing themselves as the new owners in early March. It’s enough time to take care of all the housekeeping, figuratively, on a property that Showalter said was left in such good shape by the Burns that they were able to hit the ground running.

Showalter informed all of the guests that had standing reservations that they’re good to go this season, and expects to get the reservations system for new bookings rolling in the coming weeks. Northwood’s current season opening is slated for the Tupper Lake Tinman weekend in late June. Showalter said there’s a possibility that it could be sooner, but did not want to guarantee anything quite yet.

“I can’t wait,” he said. “I’m so excited, and the enthusiasm, the excitement from guests — I’ve been getting pictures of families and people’s dogs (from guests) so happy to come back this summer. And I love, too, that people are so loyal to specific cabins. It’s like their second, little home, which is so cool.”

The Northwood Cabins' new owners, Matt Showalter, left, and Chris Davis smile for a selfie in front of P-2's Irish Pub in Tupper Lake. (Provided photo)

Showalter said he has no plans to “modernize” or change the cabins’ iconic image — and reiterated that his April 1 Facebook post about removing the sign was, in fact, an ‘April Fools’ joke.

“It’s not going anywhere,” he said.

For now at least, Showalter said he’s managing the day-to-day operations at Northwood as he lives there full-time. Davis continues to have family and professional obligations in Nashville, but will be up often.

“He loves being here,” Showalter said. “All the time that he can spend up here, 100% he does. He loves it the whole way. We’re fans, we’re big on Tupper.”

A long-term goal, Showalter said, was to winterize some of the cabins and turn it into a year-round operation — though he emphasized this would be a ways down the road. Looking toward the future, he also wanted to outfit the cabins with locally-made art.

“I want everything here to be from here,” he said. “I want every picture on the wall to have been painted or photographed by someone from here.”

And in the meantime, Showalter said he’s been taken aback by how welcoming Tupper Lake has been. He’s made his way around the community, getting to know the residents and business owners who he’s proud to call neighbors.

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The journey

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Showalter said he and Davis have wanted to get into a venture like this for a bit. Previously, Showalter lived in the Seattle area, and had been driving by a four-unit motel in the Olympic National Forest — an environment not dissimilar to the Adirondacks — that was up for sale. He and his brother thought about it, but ultimately passed on it, as the sale price was too much.

It was for good reason. Greener horizons awaited.

Showalter said that put the motel idea in his head, and Davis kept actively searching for opportunities while juggling his full-time job and family responsibilities.

“Between his Powerpoints and meetings, he was always sending me things,” Showalter said with a smile.

Now that he’s a business owner, Showalter said he’s making the most of Facebook to get the word out. But he wasn’t much of a social media user beforehand, and it’s still something he’s still green at — admitting this may come as a bit of surprise to folks given how outgoing of a personality that he has.

Showalter’s social media naiveness ended up playing a central, and extremely fortuitous, part of the story.

That’s because Davis sent him an Instagram reel, or short video, of a motel that was up for sale. But since Showalter didn’t have an Instagram account — and therefore while he was able to view the video, he couldn’t directly message the seller or readily find out more information about that specific listing. It looked cool, but there was a catch: it wasn’t Northwood.

He took to Google in an effort to find out more about this listing, typing in whatever information he could surmise through the quick video.

That’s when luck struck.

“I inadvertently found this place instead,” Showalter said. “I accidentally found it. I see the listing on Facebook where Mr. Burns says, ‘Hey, we’re going to retire and we’re not going to open in 2026.'”

After quickly reading about Northwood, Showalter sent the information to Davis. It didn’t take much convincing.

“He was so gung-ho positive, even more than I am, and he’s like, ‘Let’s get it!'” Showalter said.

The two flew into Albany and drove up to Tupper Lake. Before even looking at the cabins, Showalter and Davis were hooked on the community thanks in part to their first stop in town, the Woodshed on Park, along with stops at the Swiss Kitchen and Washboard Donuts for breakfast the next couple of days.

“So step one: had I gotten here and this been a dilapidated shack, after I ate at the Woodshed, I probably still would have been like, ‘I think we should get it, I want to eat this restaurant a lot,'” Showalter said. “Food got me at the start.”

Fortunately for the new buyers, the cabins were far from a dilapidated shack. Showalter said it was evident from the start how diligent the Burns were about maintaining the property, and it didn’t take long for he and Davis to begin the closing process — Showalter and Davis reached out to make an offer as they were waiting for their flight out of Albany.

“It takes about 20 minutes,” he said of the negotiations. “We all hashed it out and that’s that.”

As it took about a month for the closing to play out, Showalter said he didn’t know much about marketing, but figured he should start representing the cabins. He reached out to a guy on Etsy about what he thought at the time would just be a generic “Northwood Cabins” green trucker hat.

What he thought at first might have been perfunctory garb was anything but. In his first day as the new owner — before word spread — Showalter said people seeing the hat sparked three hours worth of conversations on Park Street as he made his way down from the village offices to turn over the utility billing. It dawned on him, through those initial conversations with community members and business owners showed just how awesome of a community he had stumbled upon. As cheesy as it sounds, he wanted to find home, not just a place to live — and Tupper Lake has fit the bill for him in every way.

“I wanted to belong somewhere,” Showalter said. “I wanted to go somewhere because I have energy and I like to be involved, I like to care and I like friends, I like happiness and, you know, community is my thing and Chris is a huge fan of community, too, we’re all about that. Whatever that original draw was, that I trusted my gut, because in my mind, I was like, “Listen man, you’re never colder than 70 and never hotter than 85,’ … but something just felt right.”

Showalter is an avid Pickleball player and has brought the game to Tupper Lake. After talking the idea over with the town youth activities coordinator, Christielee Geiger, he reached out tothe Holy Ghost Academy’s Lisa Reed.

“She literally said, ‘It’s about time,'” Showalter said with a smile. “She said, ‘I’ve been thinking that surely one day somebody’s going to walk in here and ask about it, everyone’s always talking about it.'”

Showalter gave her his idea and attended an HGA fish fry dinner to introduce himself to the community, where he was invited to speak about the idea at mass. The idea took off.

“They gave me 12 hours of their gym every week right out of the gate, which is really cool,” he said. “They’re all people who’ve never played and we’ve got a system for getting them going and people play and they love it.”

Everyone is welcome, and Showalter said it’s been a great way to get to know people. While there is competitive and even professional pickleball, it’s a game that’s more straightforward to learn the basics of than most other racquet sports, and has ballooned in popularity over recent years.

Many of the participants are first timers, and Showalter said he was ecstatic to see how many people have been showing up to the weekly play times, both from Tupper Lake and the greater North Country region. The first session garnered about 40 people, and Showalter said the first rule is there’s no shame in looking silly — and in fact, embrace it.

“We’re hitting a wiffle ball around with a tiny paddle on the gym floor,” he said. “There is no shame in this. We all look squirely. It’s just what it is.”

More information on Tupper Lake pickleball is available at tupperlake.com/events/pickleball.

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‘Big on Tupper’

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Above all else, Showalter said Tupper Lake is a “sincere place,” one whose heritage as a working class town is something that shouldn’t be looked down upon, but celebrated. It’s both a destination in the middle of the Adirondacks and a great place to live, he said.

“It’s a great place for somebody to move to and live. It’s more affordable to a lot of people,” Showalter said. “You’re in the middle of the Adirondacks, the heart of everything, the epicenter of it. You’re half as much as other places to stay, and you have the genuine side of it. You’re hanging out at a tiny little nine-cabin motel with a goofy guy and then you’re going to karaoke and watching that production and then you’re sitting at a restaurant that a couple owns because they’ve taken a chance on this town — and that’s the beauty of it.”

While Showalter said loss of industry is evident, and Tupper Lake has in many respects been in an economic downturn in recent decades, it’s important to not lose sight of how many unique assets the town has — such as the Wild Center, the James C. Frenette recreational skiing trails, Tinman, Brewski, the new Adirondack Rail Trail and the lakes, rivers and mountains minutes away in any direction — that he said will bring people to the area. But buoying all of that, he said, is a community, and that’s just as important to sell to the world.

“There’s a lot of people who want to go somewhere and they just want to be hanging out with a town,” he said. “They want to just go hang out with the people. They want it to be that — and that’s the genuine side of it. I think that’s the draw.”

Showalter, who spent time all around the country, has been to 48 of the 50 states (sans North Dakota and South Dakota) and all or if not, nearly all of the national parks, said there’s a lot of other successful towns that have revitalized themselves by pitching not only a destination, but a community behind it. Bend, Oregon, he said, is a prime example.

“They said, ‘Look, we’re going rogue. We’re not going to go with ‘Here’s how they’re selling it,’ we’re going to sell it our way,'” he said. “And the people and the businesses just said we are what we are. We’re a working class town surrounded by a bunch of really cool stuff.”

Northwood’s continued success is inextricably linked to that of Tupper Lake, and Showalter said he’s a community promoter just as much as he business owner. While he admitted he didn’t know a whole lot about the community connection, and just how special Tupper Lake was when he and Davis made the offer on the cabins, he said it hasn’t taken long to realize there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.

“I think it’s a perfect balance of ‘small town real,’ and then you throw in the wild,” Showalter said. “I’m never going to be a person to not be optimistic, but the truth is, you don’t need to count on anything (new). You already have it. It’s already here. You are in the middle of outdoor Mecca. And you happen to also be a bunch of really great people. That’s what makes it so great — you’re the whole gamut of this thing.”