Community Corner

The Mill Tavern Closed 'Until Further Notice'

Downtown Montgomery staple for nearly seven decades shuts doors following death of owner Alice Sutcliff.

A little more than a week after Alice Sutcliff’s death, the downtown bar she ran for 53 years has closed its doors.

Although , at 310 N. River Street, remained open last week, its doors were shut Monday morning, and a sign on the door read, “Bar will be closed until further notice starting June 4th.”

The Mill Liquor Store remains open but with revised hours: Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., according to the same sign. The bar’s manager (and Sutcliff’s daughter-in-law) Karen Sowers declined to comment on the changes.

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Sutcliff at 73 after many years of failing health. Her family has owned and operated The Mill for nearly seven decades. Sutcliff’s parents, Alex and Sophie Pocus, bought the tavern in 1944, and lived directly above it for years.

Sutcliff took the tavern over in 1958, and ran it through boom times and downturns. She bought the building in 1984, according to Aurora Township records.

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The adjacent liquor store has been “The Home of the Lucky Winners” since the early 1980s, when they added an Illinois lottery machine. Sales from the store have helped The Mill pay its bills after the closing of many Montgomery-area factories (and the resulting loss of clientele) in recent years, Sutcliff had said.

In a  conducted in April, Sutcliff said it would be “the end of an era” if The Mill ever closed.

Though the family has not revealed their intentions for the tavern, should it close for good, it will join the ranks of vacant River Street commercial properties including the Boca Burrito II building and the old Gray’s Mill, which once housed Jason’s.

Though some might see this as a bad sign for downtown, Charlene Coulombe-Fiore, executive director of the , said it could also be an opportunity.

“When things pick back up, that could be a great opportunity for someone,” she said. “It should and could be a gold mine. A lot of people go there.”

But all of that, Coulombe-Fiore said, is dependent on how Sutcliff’s family chooses to proceed. For now The Mill Tavern remains closed—as Sutcliff herself said, the end of an era.


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