Bluefish Hospitality Development (BHD) is a boutique hotel development and management company founded in January of 2018. The company was born when Rich Cooper, a real estate developer and principal at Bluefish Property Group (BPG) for nearly a decade, began to focus strictly on hospitality. Over the past six years, Cooper has developed eight boutique hotels with his development partner, Rob Blood of Lark Hotels. Cooper convinced BPG Project Coordinator Sara Garibotto to join him at BHD, and she was quickly promoted to Project Manager. Cooper and Garibotto then embarked on their own project renovating The Hotel Marblehead, a property that BHD also manages. Bluefish Hospitality Development aims to elevate the standard and establish a modern class to the boutique hotel industry.
About Us
Boutique Hotel Development & Management
Rich Cooper, Managing Member
Rich Cooper combines his passion for architectural preservation with his penchant for streamlined design into a portfolio of distinctive destination hotels. Involved in real estate for over seventeen years, Rich began his career as an award-winning realtor and residential developer in Marblehead, MA. He quickly discovered a passion for restoration and development, particularly for boutique hotels. He and fellow development partner, Rob Blood, combined their efforts in 2014 and have developed eight Lark Hotel properties together.
Within the boutique hotel arena, Rich has been in charge of over $75,000,000 worth of projects and has been associated with numerous accolades along the way. As the guiding force in renovations throughout the region, Rich was the developer for Field Guide in Stowe, VT, winning Conde Nast Traveler magazine’s “Readers’ Choice Award for Top Hotel in New England,” as well as Gilded in Newport, RI, rated one of the “Best New Hotels in New England” by Yankee magazine.
Rich holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Communication from The University of New Hampshire, and a Master of Science degree in Mass Communication from Boston University.
Sara Garibotto, Project Manager
Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area, Sara Garibotto crossed the country and has been happily making her home along the waterfront of the East Coast for the last two decades. With a long-term accounting background in the real estate industry, Sara has combined her education and experience to help coordinate over $10,000,000 in eight Lark Hotels construction projects and has acted as the project liaison between the construction teams, design teams and architect teams for multiple boutique hotel projects.
As the co-designer of the Hotel Marblehead, she worked alongside Rich Cooper to reimagine New England nautical style and create the modern maritime aesthetic that has become the hotel’s signature.
She now serves as Project Manager for Bluefish Hospitality Development (BHD) dividing her time between budgeting for The Hotel Marblehead, managing investor communication for a handful of Lark Hotels and managing the budgets of BHD’s renovation projects.