The building at 2 Church Avenue is a deep, unmistakable blue, the kind of color you notice from the road even if you don't know yet what's inside. For roughly two years it sat closed, the space Gaskins left behind when the restaurant shut its doors in 2024. This spring, the lights came back on. Nines opened there on April 10, 2026, and the parking lot has been full most weekends since.
That alone might be a small, pleasant story about one restaurant replacing another. What makes it worth a closer look is that Nines wasn't the only reopening. Between January and August of this year, three separate addresses in Germantown, a hamlet the town's own website counts at just over 2,000 year-round residents, each found a new tenant after sitting closed. That's not a coincidence of timing. It's three different operators making three different bets on the same short stretch of road within eight months of each other, and each bet came from a different direction entirely.
Three Addresses, Three Openings
| Address | What Closed | What Opened | Opening Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Church Avenue | Gaskins (closed 2024) | Nines | April 10, 2026 |
| 1774 Route 9 | Tousey Winery (closed late 2025) | Tousey NY | July 2026 |
| 6 Palatine Park Road | Valley Harvest | Two Guys Local Bites - Germantown | April 17, 2026 |
None of these three businesses have anything to do with each other. They didn't coordinate an opening season, and they aren't chasing the same customer. But taken together, they say something about how a small river hamlet fills back in once a storefront goes dark, and it isn't always the same story twice.
A Chef Couple Who Weren't Looking For This
Nines came from Avery Jannelli and Ryan McLaughlin, a couple with the kind of resumes that don't usually land in a hamlet this size. Jannelli had been general manager at Inness in Accord. McLaughlin was chef at Mirador in Kingston. They met in Philadelphia, where Jannelli worked as director of special projects for the High Street Hospitality restaurant group, and by the time they landed in the Hudson Valley they were already quietly planning their next move together.
The Gaskins space came to them through a personal connection rather than a listing search. Nick and Sarah Suarez, who had run Gaskins and were longtime friends of McLaughlin's, were looking for a buyer they trusted with the building. Jannelli has said the goodwill already built into that address was a real part of what made the opportunity worth taking. The menu they built leans into what McLaughlin calls a Riviera concept, coastal Italian and French cooking with produce sourced from Columbia County farms, and McLaughlin has described the goal simply as being approachable and familiar rather than fussy.
The Same Family, A Different Name On The Door
Tousey Winery closed at the end of 2025, and by the middle of this summer the same building at 1774 Route 9 had a new identity. Kimberly Tousey reopened the space as Tousey NY, a bar and cafe rather than a working winery, describing her goal as building a gathering place where people can relax and reconnect over food and drinks. The new spot serves handcrafted cocktails, rotating local craft beer, and wine, along with a Sunday brunch that includes unlimited mimosas and Bloody Marys. It's open Thursdays and Fridays from noon to 9 p.m., Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sunday brunch from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., with live music and community events planned for the months ahead.
This is a different kind of reopening than Nines. It isn't new ownership taking over a beloved local landmark. It's the same family deciding the building had another use in it yet.
A Second Location in Germantown
The third address, 6 Palatine Park Road, had been Valley Harvest before Two Guys Local Bites opened its second location there on April 17, 2026. The brand started in 2024 as a food stand, with Dan Edwards and his father-in-law Mark selling sandwiches and burgers at breweries and wineries across the Hudson Valley before opening their first sit-down restaurant in Preston Hollow that July.
Preston Hollow is about forty minutes from Germantown. When the Palatine Park Road space became available, Edwards and his wife April opened a second location there. April now runs the Germantown location full time. In the opening announcement, Edwards was careful to draw a line between the new business and what had come before it, saying they weren't trying to replace Valley Harvest, only to start a new era where the last one had ended. The grand opening featured live music from Brian Edwards, and the space is set up for outdoor seating, pickup, and delivery rather than full table service, a different footprint than Preston Hollow's.
The Park That Was Already Full
None of these three openings happened in a hamlet that was otherwise quiet. Germantown's Town Hall sits at 50 Palatine Park Road, the same road as the Pavilion where the town holds its Independence Day fireworks every July 5. Last November, the Recreation Committee ran the first Annual Germantown Turkey Walk at that same park, a new tradition the town board specifically thanked the committee for bringing to the community.
A few minutes down the road, Clermont State Historic Site has spent the warmer months hosting its Harmonies on the Hudson concert series on the Arryl Lawn, presented by Fix Bros. Fruit Farm, with free evening shows running into late summer. These aren't restaurant events. They're proof that the calendar around Germantown's public spaces was already active before any of these three storefronts reopened. The dining scene didn't create that activity. It caught up to it.
Three buildings that sat dark, each for a different reason and each for a different length of time, now have their lights on again. A couple with fine-dining resumes took over a friend's old restaurant because the goodwill was already there. A winery family decided their own building had a second life as something else. A husband and wife brought their second location to Germantown. None of that required a single new building to go up along Route 9. It just required three people willing to walk back into spaces other people had already walked out of.
Kyle Elizabeth Irwin keeps track of these details because they're what actually tells you whether a town like Germantown is holding steady. If you're curious what else has changed along this stretch of the river, or want a longer view of how the hamlet's small commercial corridor has moved over the past two years, Let's Connect.
