By Sally Voth -- Daily Staff Writer

WOODSTOCK — It's taken a generation for Tony Cipollina to find a way to restore a landmark rock inn to its former glory.

Now, the Bronx native hopes to renovate the roughly 100-year-old two-story structure, that used to be an eatery called Dorothy's Inn, and open a restaurant there. He has yet to settle on the cuisine.

The building is located on Old Valley Pike between Edinburg and Woodstock.

"I'm in the beginning stages right now," said Cipollina, who lives in Alexandria.

He plans to meet with Shenandoah County Planning Director Chris Boies and an engineer this week.

This spring, the Board of Supervisors agreed to allow private wastewater treatment discharging facilities throughout the county under certain conditions. The package plants must be for existing properties where no sewer or septic system is available, must process more than 1,000 gallons daily and can't be for homes.

"That meeting, I was really surprised," Cipollina said. "October will be 22 years [since he bought the property], and I will finally be able to flush a toilet.

"I've been on hold now for 22 years."

An entrepreneur, who has owned flower shops, restaurants and even an ice cream store, Cipollina bought the property "on an impulse" more than two decades ago.

"One day I just took a day off and I went out [to Shenandoah County] and I saw two buildings for sale," he said. "I just loved that building. I had no plans whatsoever. It was just an impulse. As time went on, I found out it was going to be a very difficult undertaking to get my discharge permit."

In the interim, the former restaurant and inn was rented out various times, to antiques dealers, to a Civil War shop, to a church.

The building, which has "rubble-style" architecture with stones jutting out and a step parapet roof has a colorful past. Cippolina's Web page details some of its history. The original owners ran a tearoom and hotel there, the Web page says.

During Prohibition, things got interesting at the site, with it becoming a speakeasy and a bordello. When Cipollina first bought the place, it still had 8-by-8-foot rooms upstairs.

One day while at the former inn 20 years ago, an elderly man asked Cipollina if he could see the upstairs. He confided that it was there that he had lost his virginity.

Later, Raymond and Dorothy Satchel owned the building, running the restaurant Dorothy's Inn from the early 1940s to late 1960s, according to the Web site. Leonard Bernstein operated The Narrow Passage Inn there for several years.

Woodstock resident Helen Cooley, 90, recalled working for the Satchels in the 1940s.

"It was a summer resort," she said. "It was quite a good business in those days because there wasn't much going on in those days. It was nice. She had lace tablecloths on the tables and we had nice dinners. You could get a nice shrimp dinner for $3. [Mrs. Satchel] was a wonderful cook. Fried chicken was really our special, and that was 99 cents with shoestring potatoes and cole slaw. You'd be surprised how far people would come for that. It was a bargain.

"We had the most delicious rolls. I have that recipe. It was fun working there. We had quite a menu. We had wedding celebrations there, a little bit of everything went on there. It was a respectable place to be."

Chickens would arrive on ice in barrels, Cooley said. She walked across a swinging bridge to arrive at work.

Times were tough then, she said.

"I got a dollar a day," Cooley said. "I went in at 10 in the morning and out when the inn was closed at 9 o'clock. I lived right across the river at the dairy."

After she'd worked there for eight years, she told Satchel she would no longer work for $1 a day. He raised her pay to $1.50.

But, the building hasn't had a really viable use since health inspectors broke the terra cotta drain depositing sewage directly into the Shenandoah River which flows behind it.

Cipollina plans to meet with officials from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and the Virginia Department of Transportation, and expects the construction of the treatment plant to take several months.

He has plans to build a glassed-in cantilever on the back of the inn to serve as a dining room. The plan is for it to jut off the hillside 22 feet, but Cipollina might extend that to 30 feet. Patrons will have sweeping views of the river, mountain and a nearby farm.

"The views are just majestic there," Cipollina said.

The former dining room will be turned into a lounge and bar.

The upstairs will be office space he plans to lease out. A tiny stone cottage just up the road from the inn will also be leased out as office or retail space.

"I'm going to keep the structure as close to the original as possible," Cipollina said.

Cipollina said he is open to suggestions.

"I'm leaning right now towards a fine dining and American cuisine, but I'm not even 100 percent sure if I'm going to be the operator of the restaurant," he said. "I'm open to someone else's business plan. Ultimately, whatever I arrive at is going to be well thought out. I know the food business, and I'm familiar with the problems Shenandoah County has experienced in the last two years with the closures. I'm going to be very careful with what I'm going to put in.

"If somebody comes along and has a better idea and a lot more energy than me, or I see it working, I would be just as happy to be a landlord as I would an operator."

Cipollina has a Web site about the inn at www.myspace.com/narrowpassageinn.

Contact Sally Voth at svoth@nvdaily.com