Events on Broadway closes

The latest banquet hall in the spot is shuttered, joining a restaurant in the same building that shut down in the summer

SOUTH PORTLAND — The Events on Broadway banquet hall in South Portland has closed its doors, effective Dec. 6, but company owner Kevin Fallen says his business that backed it, Personal Touch Catering, is going strong.

“South Portland was tough community to break into, we just didn’t get the support that we felt we needed,” said Fallen, who had rented the building at 729 Broadway, “but Personal Touch is not out of business by any means.”

In addition to the catering business, which continues to take bookings at the website, ptcmaine.com, Fallen owns two other restaurants – The Roost in Buxton and Phat Boys Diner in Cornish. In all, Fallen has 25 employees. None was put out of a job by the shuttering of Events on Broadway, he said.

Fallen ran the physical location for his catering business for three and a half years. Each year, he said, his rent went up.

“It just got to be too much, trying to meet the triple-net lease over there. I couldn’t carry it any further,” he said, attributing some of the apparent failure of Events on Broadway to catch fire on “previous history at the site.”

Building owner Louis Maietta Jr. ran a banquet business at the 12,500-square-foot Broadway building with his daughters ran for several years, before eventually closing down and renting to Fallen.

On Monday, Maietta said the building is “pretty much open to whoever comes in to look at it.”

The entire building is vacant, including the 7,500-square-foot event hall and the 5,000-square-foot side that formally housed The Grill House Local Tavern, which closed in June. Both sides have full-scale commercial kitchens and could be run separately or together, said Maietta.

“It’s a turnkey business on both sides, both the restaurant and the banquet hall,” said Maietta. “Anybody could go in and open tomorrow, after just getting their licenses and permits. There’s been a banquet room there since 1993, so it’s well established.”