Jimmy and Brendan Gillis have been run through the mill. Or, more accurately, run out of the mill building.
Gillis Family Tavern, their four-year-old restaurant in the Jenney Grist Mill complex along Town Brook, was doing well until 2024. That’s when an ambitious $20.9 million project to remake the Jenney Pond area began. The result will be a huge improvement to one of the town’s natural jewels, bolstering its environmental resilience and enhancing the landscape. But like any project of this scope, there have been changes and delays. The timeline for completion of the work has been stretched into spring of next year. The original plan to steer clear of the summer tourist season has been scrapped.
Today, the park is an active construction zone. One on end, it’s cut off from Brewster Gardens and access to the waterfront. At the other, heavy equipment, a contractor trailer, and piles of construction materials consume precious free parking spaces around the pond. On weekdays, police officers direct what limited traffic goes in and out of the Spring Lane lot – mostly generated by a pediatric dentistry practice. Truck and tractor back-up signals sound more regularly than bird chirping.
The mess and noise, while unavoidable, put a serious hurt on Gillis Family Tavern. As work slowly progressed, the business became collateral damage. After enduring a year and a half of disruption and financial hardship, the restaurant closed at the end of May.
But that’s not where the Gillises’ story ends. They plan to reopen later this year in the Main Street space formerly filled by the notorious Proof 22 bar and restaurant.
Jimmy Gillis and his son are busy working on the new location, but in a recent phone conversation his excitement about the future was tempered by lingering resentment over the rocky path that forced the move.
“It has been a complete nightmare,” Jimmy said. “We lost at least $2,000 a day on lunch. I don’t know how we survived as long as we did.”
Dinner service was less affected because the construction crew had packed up for the day. Thankfully, loyal customers were willing to navigate the work site labyrinth. Tourists, however, took one look at the scene and headed elsewhere for their burgers and wings.
“They made no walkways for anyone to really get into the restaurant,” Gillis said. “I don’t even know how OSHA [the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration] hasn’t shut this whole job down. During the day, there’s trucks going back and forth and there’s no pedestrian safety walkways or anything. Basically, we were in the middle of the Big Dig.”
Gillis hoped for some form of financial help from the town or the federal government, which is partially funding the project through a $10 million National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grant. That didn’t happen.
“On nights and weekends, we did pretty well,” he said, “but not enough to carry the lunch money we were losing…I feel like the Town of Plymouth could have done this a lot different and had some type of compensation for us. I’m not saying pay for everything, but there should have been some kind of leeway. It made us fall behind on all kinds of bills and taxes. We had to dig deep out of our own pockets to make sure everyone got paid.”
Town Manager Derek Brindisi called the work “extremely complicated,” a description anyone who’s surveyed the area can confirm. It’s far more involved than a beautification project. The job “consists of upgrading the Jenney Pond dam, improving the storm water system, creating a fish bypass and repairing the walkway to Brewster Gardens,” Brindisi said in an email. “The Department of Energy and Environment has been working closely with area businesses to limit any negative impact and will continue to do so until project completion.”
That’s not likely to placate Jimmy and Brendan Gillis, but they don’t have time to continue ruminating on the grist mill debacle. They’re grateful for the intervention of developer Rick Vayo, who owns the former Proof 22 space and was eager to erase memories of that failed venture.
“We ultimately weren’t happy with where Proof was going,” Vayo said in a phone conversation. “That relationship fizzled out. But we wanted to make sure that the next relationship is what we want to see for downtown.”
Taking a cue from the TV series “Undercover Boss,” he made two visits to the restaurant before striking a lease deal with the Gillis family.
“I went there without ever mentioning who I was,” Vayo said. “I was very impressed with what they did.”
On one of those occasions, he brought a party of about 10, a stress test for the kitchen and servers.
“We had everything from pizza to salmon,” he said. “I think someone had a steak, someone else had a salad. It was a pretty wide range of what they prepare. Everything was spot on. They had a very nice waitstaff, and everything came out on time. So I instantly went back to them and said, ‘Let’s talk about what we can do here.’”
Vayo, whose focus on lifting downtown to the next level borders on healthy obsession, said the tavern will fill a niche.
“My view has always been that downtown Plymouth needs an eclectic mix of dining options,” he said. “We need three more Cork + Tables, no question about that. But we’re also lacking a little bit in what I would term the mid-tier, or American cuisine. It can’t all be ‘fine dining.’ What Gillis does is prepare good food…They’re putting a lot of money into it.”
Gillis envisions the restaurant as an accessible “bistro pub.”
“You can have your pizza, your wings, salads, but you can also have a real good chicken or steak dinner,” he said. “I don’t want to say high end, but better than mid-range.”
The atmosphere, he said, will be markedly different from the rowdy scene that marked weekend nights at Proof 22 and its similarly problematic predecessor, T-Bones Roadhouse.
“We want nothing to do with that,” Gillis said. “We took everything down to the walls.”
He described an interior that will feature exposed brick, a copper ceiling, antique chandeliers and wall sconces, cherry wood floors, and “unbelievably comfortable seats.”
There will also be the requisite big-screen TVs, but “we’re not going to overdo it,” he said.
Oh, and reasonable prices, too.
“We’re still a family restaurant,” Gillis said.
He aims to be up and running in time to have those TVs showing NFL games in September, but October may be more realistic given the tangle of red tape involved in opening a restaurant.
This is not the plan Gillis envisioned when he opened the doors at the grist mill, but despite the tumult of the last 18 months, he sounds more excited than anxious about starting over.
“We’ll be ready,” he said. “We’re Irish stubborn.”
Mark Pothier can be reached at mark@plymouthindependent.org.