The beloved Betty’s Townhouse is back in town with some new owners ready to revitalize the small town hotspot while staying true to the restaurant’s homemade history.

Though the name has changed to Mae’s Townhouse, Seth Pacey, the owner of Lola’s Modern Kitchen, said they want to keep it true to how the diner has always been.

“We are doing a very subtle rebrand,” he said. “We want to give it that same small town diner feel. We all love it and we want to honor that.”

Lois “Betty” Lebline opened Betty’s Townhouse in 1962. Lebline worked in the service industry for many years before retiring and selling her business in 1974 to Edward and Doris Kent.

The Kents ran the restaurant until 1983 when they decided to sell. A group of “regulars” from the restaurant banded together and bought the restaurant to keep their favorite eatery alive, giving ownership to Betty’s daughter-in-law, Joanne Sterling.

In the fall of 1996, it was sold to Connie Stockhover, who waitressed there as a 12-year-old and ownership was later passed down over the years. The diner was featured in a 1997 edition of Time’s Magazine honoring popular roadside attractions. The cameo put Townhouse Café on the map for curious travelers and locals to take pride in.

In recent months, Townhouse Cafe’s future wasn’t looking sunny-side up as it closed operations and leased the building.

For Pacey, everything started to fall into place with the help of his family.

“I’m always looking for new opportunities,” he said. “At first, I thought I wasn’t going to be able to open it, but it all came on very suddenly. My sister decided to invest in this with me and now it’s a family ordeal.”

Pacey said the two questions that have been asked frequently since he announced the re-opening of the restaurant is when the opening date is and if they will still have the famous tenderloin.

The previous owners offered to share not only former staff contact information, but also 50-year-old recipes that are written on index cards, Pacey said.

“It won’t even be us developing a tenderloin it will still be the townhouse tenderloin,” he said. “We also want to bring up the decorating a little to make it a bit more modern and add some outdoor seating.”

Pacey said he envisions the café as it’s always been, a cool roadside Americana diner and hopes to open mid to late November.

“We want it to be like something you would see on Route 66 or something people could travel to and remind them of America through the years,” he said.

Gathering inspiration from his daughter Lola once again, using her middle name, Pacey said she is excited for a new restaurant, but not as much as watching cartoons.

“We asked her how she liked the new restaurant, and she was like ‘it’s pretty cool,’ that was the end of it,” he said. “She wanted to go back and watch cartoons.”

When Pacey first announced the new ownership of the café, he received a massive positive response from the community.

“I knew people would be excited, but I had no idea the kind of response we would get and how much people missed it,” he said. “Now there’s even more pressure and we have a lot of people that will have expectations.”

Managing two restaurants along with his wife, Tonya, who owns Pacey’s Apothecary in downtown Seymour, the couple are no strangers to time management. Along with a dedicated staff, Pacey said he is grateful for those around him that offer to help.

“We have been really lucky to find and develop a team that really cares and is willing to take care of things when I am not there,” he said. “We are just going to do our best and use our experience to try to elevate while keeping the restaurant true to itself.”

While he was originally raised in Cortland and frequented the Cortland diner in his youth, Pacey fondly remembers eating breakfast at the back table in the Townhouse Café with his grandmother, his daughter and wife.

Since the announcement, many residents and local regulars have reached out to him to share their fond memories of the beloved diner.

“It really means a lot to me and it really set in how many memories people have there and how beloved of a spot it is,” he said.

Adding another business to his already busy plate, Pacey said there will be additional job opportunities for the community and potentially more dining options.

“We plan to be open for dinner as well as breakfast and lunch the days we are open,” he said. “With additional seating we will most definitely need to hire and hope to be open six days a week.”

While the restaurant is not going to be like Lola’s Modern Kitchen, which offers modern twists on Americana food, the announcement has brought unexpected attention to his restaurant on 820 An Avenue East, Seymour.

“It has been an unexpected benefit and hopefully we make people happy that the café is back,” he said.