After more than a decade of neglect, an effort to do something about the town’s most prominent eyesore is finally underway.
The owners of the former Bert’s restaurant site on Warren Avenue are shopping a conceptual plan to town officials for a new four-story mixed-use building, with a restaurant, lounge, outdoor decks, and other uses at the waterfront property.
To help make it happen, the owners are asking to lease a portion of the town-owned parking lot to the north of the building, which was a de facto parking area for the former restaurant. The site’s other parking area, to the south of the building, is part of the restaurant property.
Discussion of the lease is on the agenda for the Select Board’s closed-door executive session on Tuesday.
Town Manager Derek Brindisi did not want to talk about the project or potential lease before the Select Board meeting, but in January he told the Independent that the site is “the property I get the most calls about. It’s a blight on the area.”
The conceptual plans shared with the town show a four-story building with wrap-around decks on the second and third floors plus a roof deck. The building is elevated 11 feet above the ground on pillars to protect it from storm tides. The top of the building is 64 feet high. Including the exterior decks, there is 22,350 feet of space on four floors.
The beachfront location has nearly 100 years of history as a restaurant. Albert “Bert” Boutin of Plymouth bought the land in 1930 and opened Bert’s Lobster Shack. He ran it for 30 years, with success leading to construction of a larger full-service restaurant and lounge on the site, simply called Bert’s.
The building was heavily damaged in the Blizzard of ’78, but repairs were made and it remained open until 1990, when the company that owned it at the time filed for bankruptcy and the bank foreclosed on the property.
George Demeter, a self-made Boston real estate developer and co-founder of the Mercantile Bank and Trust Company bought the property in 1994 from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which had taken control after the Plymouth Five Cents Savings Bank, which had foreclosed on the property, failed in 1992.
Demeter had a summer home in the Manomet Bluffs section of Plymouth and is said to have enjoyed many meals with friends and family at Bert’s and was sad to watch its demise. Demeter leased the building to a series of short-lived restaurants that struggled. The building has been vacant since 2013 and damaged several times by, wind and waves.
Demeter died in 2015 and the property is now owned by his heirs.
The parcel is assessed by the town for $1.35 million. This year’s property tax bill is $17,306. The owners are current with their property taxes. A long-running rumor maintains that the owners have allowed the site to decay so they could incur losses as a tax write-off.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Michael Psikarakis, part of the property’s ownership group, said in a text to the Independent for a January story. “These types of projects take time. Unfortunately, Covid caused some setbacks. However, we are excited to be actively working towards developing this landmark location.”
Michael Cohen can be reached at michael@plymouthindependent.org.