PLAINFIELD – All that remains of a once-popular bar and restaurant on Route 30 in Plainfield are boarded up windows and an iconic three-leaf clover.
The Plainfield franchise of Durbin's, a pizza chain with eight locations in Chicago's south suburbs, closed in September, owner Ed Schmidt said Friday.
“We’re working on [future plans for the building] right now,” Schmidt said of the 16031 S. Lincoln Highway location, declining to comment on why the restaurant closed.
However, a member of the chain’s founding family, the McAuliffes, said the closure may have resulted from the franchise straying from the recipes and standards of the chain.
Tom McAuliffe opened Durbin’s in Plainfield in August 2012. He sold the location in October 2013 with a licensing agreement to Schmidt, allowing Schmidt to continue the restaurant and bar as a franchise.
“I want to apologize to the people in the Plainfield and Joliet areas,” McAuliffe said. “We had a fantastic family-owned product.”
McAuliffe said after the sale, Schmidt reneged on a licensing agreement that outlined how Durbin’s should be maintained.
“We had a licensing agreement with a gentleman’s understanding to do a good job, but it turned out to be a catastrophe,” McAuliffe said. “[Schmidt] wouldn’t follow it.”
Schmidt declined to comment on McAuliffe’s allegations.
McAuliffe declined to go into details, citing a pending lawsuit with Schmidt. But he said he was disappointed with the outcome of the franchise, noting it was the only location that has ever failed.
“More than a year in and we were doing very good business,” he said. “It’s a shame Durbin’s name was involved with this.”
Blighted building
The closure of Durbin’s is just one more failure at 16031 S. Lincoln Highway.
“That building has always been a challenge,” Plainfield Village Planner Michael Garrigan said.
Prior to Durbin’s, the building featured Pom Poms All American Bar and Grill and Valentino’s, Garrigan said. But both businesses closed.
The building rests on the Route 30 corridor, designated a blighted area by the village, and is included in the village’s planned tax increment financing district.
The district, if approved by the village, would help fund renovations for infrastructure and facade improvements for businesses along the corridor, including the shuttered Durbin’s building.
McAuliffe said the end of the Plainfield location doesn’t necessarily mean the end of Durbin’s in the Joliet area.
“I would love to come back to that great area,” he said. “The people from Plainfield and Joliet have supported us well.”