A few months ago, a stretch of European chestnut arrived at 265 Post Road in Dunn's Corners, cut and fitted for a new bar. The building had most recently housed the Thirsty Beaver, and before that, the Sea Goose. By late winter it belonged to Tavern 265, a restaurant three Westerly men built together after years of working the same kitchens and bars around town.
That detail, the chestnut, the address, the men who put it there, matters more than it looks like it should. Because if you trace every restaurant that has opened, reopened, or rebuilt in Westerly over the past two years, you find the same pattern underneath each one. Nobody came from away. Every operator behind this stretch of downtown activity already had roots here, left for a while in some cases, and came back to build on Main Street or Canal Street or Post Road specifically because it was home. Meanwhile, the national chains moving into town this year picked a different address entirely: the highway plaza on Route 1, not the historic downtown.
That split is the actual story of Westerly right now. Not a list of new places to eat, but two distinct kinds of growth happening at once, in two different parts of town, driven by two different kinds of decision-makers.
The Restaurant Built by Someone Who Left and Came Back
Padraic Fazio grew up in Westerly, moved to Connecticut with his family around age 12, spent time in Boston, and eventually returned. He's best known locally as co-owner of Ten Sandwiches, the seasonal spot he runs with his brother Paul in Watch Hill. When he decided to open a second restaurant, he looked at spaces in Newport and Providence first.
He ended up back in downtown Westerly instead, opening Bird in Hand at 12 Canal Street. The name is deliberate. As Fazio put it, the idea was about being thankful for what's already on your doorstep rather than searching around for somewhere else.
Fazio had watched downtown Westerly shift over the years he was gone and the years he was back, including a multimillion-dollar revival of the United Theatre and a string of Main Street improvements. Growing up, he's said, downtown wasn't the busiest place. There were a lot of empty storefronts. That's changed enough that he built his second restaurant into it on purpose.
"I always loved Westerly and have now kind of made the full circle."
The Tavern With the Chestnut Bar
Tavern 265 has a similar origin story, just with three names instead of one. Jay Beausoleil managed the Haversham for more than a decade before partnering with Brandon Van Horn and Zack Schroth, both Westerly residents in their early thirties who'd worked alongside him there. Schroth graduated from Westerly High School in 2013. All three had spent years in the same rooms before deciding to build one of their own.
The restaurant occupies 265 Post Road in Dunn's Corners, the building most recently known as the Thirsty Beaver and before that the Sea Goose. The menu leans into tavern staples: burgers, steaks, baked haddock, prime rib, a Portuguese clam appetizer among the specials. The build-out includes seventeen TV screens and twenty-eight beers on draft, plus that chestnut bar. Beausoleil has described the goal plainly: a place where people feel like family when they walk in.
The Building That Burned and Came Back to the Same Spot
Not every reopening was a matter of choice. The Cooked Goose, a longtime breakfast and lunch spot on Watch Hill Road with a history of serving well-known visitors including Taylor Swift, caught fire in January 2025. It stayed closed for more than a year while the building was rebuilt.
It reopened this past March, back in the same location, serving the same breakfast-and-lunch hours it always had. In their own words, marking the return after "a year of rebuilding, reflecting, and rising from the ashes." That's a full year of a Watch Hill Road storefront sitting dark, and the fact that it came back at all, in the same spot, run by the same people, fits the same pattern as the newer openings: continuity chosen over relocation.
The Chamber of Commerce Bought a Building Too
The clearest sign that this is a town reinvesting in itself isn't a restaurant at all. In May 2025, the Ocean Community Chamber of Commerce bought a two-story, 3,700-square-foot warehouse at 170 Main Street, a building that had no water or electricity, sitting between Hallock's Appliances and Brumble Bikes, directly across from Cinder restaurant. The board raised $350,000 to buy it.
They didn't stop there. The Chamber is now underway on an $800,000 renovation, replacing the roof and developing the upper level, aimed in part at the town's local housing shortage. Chamber President Lisa Fabian called it a huge undertaking for a nonprofit, one that supports a primary goal in the town's comprehensive plan.
That renovation recently got a boost: a state grant through Rhode Island Commerce, with the local grant committee led by Ruedi Hauser III of 13th Hour Distilling and assisted by Jennifer Brinton of Grey Sail Brewing. Local business owners, in other words, showing up to help fund another local institution's building.
The Other Kind of Growth Is Happening on Route 1
Contrast that with what's arriving at Westerly Crossings, the shopping plaza on Route 1. Chipotle and Five Guys were confirmed for the plaza this summer, taking over the former home of Petsense, according to developer Carpionato Group. That's national chain expansion, decided in a corporate office somewhere else, landing in a retail corridor built for exactly that kind of tenant.
There's nothing wrong with a Chipotle. But it's worth being precise about where each kind of growth is choosing to happen. Main Street and Canal Street got local operators rebuilding, reopening, and reinvesting. Route 1 got national chains filling plaza vacancies. Those are two different economies operating a few miles apart, and neither one is likely to become the other anytime soon.
What This Means If You Already Live Here
Downtown's momentum isn't limited to restaurants. The United Theatre, a 700-capacity venue that itself underwent that multimillion-dollar revival Fazio mentioned, has a packed fall calendar, with John Craigie playing in late August and Colin Blunstone and Peter Asher booked for September 6. A few blocks away, the 18-acre Wilcox Park hosted this year's Summer Pops concert on June 20, an event that typically draws more than 25,000 people to the park, and the park's Next Up Festival, now in its third year, keeps giving local musicians a stage on the historic bandstand each summer.
None of this is new in the sense of unprecedented. Downtown Westerly was named one of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's "Dozen Distinctive Destinations" back in 2002, and the current wave of restaurants and renovations is really just the latest lap in a revitalization that's been running for two decades. What's different this year is how concentrated the evidence is: a chef circling back after considering Newport and Providence, three friends building a bar out of chestnut in the same building where they used to work down the street, a chamber of commerce buying its own building on Main Street, and a breakfast spot rebuilding after a fire rather than closing for good.
If you already live here, none of this requires you to do anything. It's just useful to know, walking down Main Street this fall, why so much of it feels new and familiar at the same time. The people building it never really left.
At ONE Residential, we spend as much time paying attention to what's happening on Westerly's Main Street as we do to what's happening in its listings. If you're curious how any of this shapes the town's housing market, or simply want to talk through what you're seeing on your own street, request a private consultation and let's talk about it.
