"This is kind of stately, this is definitely classic," Doug Lalone said this spring about the building he'd just taken over in Camillus. He wasn't describing a new restaurant. He was describing a wedding venue, because the Inn Between, the restaurant that occupied that same 1880s building for more than fifty years, closed in January and isn't coming back as a place to eat.
The new owners come from the Central New York restaurant business and previously owned the Gem Diner and The Preserve in the Inner Harbor. The property is now The Inn Between Wedding Venue, which lists weddings, conferences and rehearsals.
That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should. A restaurant that runs for fifty years in one building doesn't just serve food. It becomes the default answer to "where should we go for Mom's birthday" or "where can fifteen of us sit down together." When that answer disappears, the question doesn't disappear with it. People still have retirement parties. Families still need a table for fifteen. The question just goes looking for a new answer, and in Camillus, it didn't have to look far.
Where Township 5 Fits In
Township 5, the shopping center anchored by Costco and the Marcus Theatre, is home to sit-down options such as Bulfinch Taphouse & Bistro, Toss & Fire Pizzeria, Indian Grill Fine Indian Cuisine, Mitsuba Japanese Cuisine. Add Vine & Barrel and Branching Out Bottle Shop for the drink side of that same gathering, and a coffee run at the new Zaman Coffee House location the next morning, and the plaza holds a full evening's worth of locally run places to eat and drink together.
Witty Wicks, one of the retail shops that moved into the plaza, put it simply.
"What I love the most about it is there's so many locally owned businesses in the plaza."
That's Witty Wicks founder and CEO Aubry Panek describing Township 5, where several of the tenants are locally owned.
Wingstop opened its first Central New York location at 3528 West Genesee Street this past April, in the storefront that used to be a GameStop. It's a quick-service option rather than a sit-down dinner, and it sits along the same West Genesee Street corridor.
Main Street's Calendar Never Needed a Dinner Reservation
Main Street's fall events sit on a different footing than a dinner reservation.
This September, the Village of Camillus ran its bi-annual streetwide sale on September 12, weather permitting, with shop owners setting up along Main Street the way they have for years. A week later, on September 19, the Village Fall Fest took over the same stretch from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., organized by Sixty One Main Boutique and Beauty Bar, with food trucks, local vendors, and seasonal shopping filling the sidewalks in front of the village's storefronts. Both events are daytime, retail-driven, foot-traffic occasions. Neither one needed a restaurant with table service to make them work.
Main Street's first floors hold Synple and Sixty One Main for boutique shopping, Salvage Designs for gifts, Divine Realm Books for something to read, and Freedom of Espresso for the coffee that gets you through browsing all of it. The village runs on a farmers market, a summer concert series in Bicentennial Park, a Memorial Day parade, fireworks a few days ahead of the Fourth of July, Towpath Day at the canal park, and a Holiday Sip & Shop once the weather turns. Every one of those events assumes people are walking, shopping, and stopping for coffee, not sitting down for a two-hour meal. None of those events was scheduled around the Inn Between's dining room, so the village calendar ran on its usual dates this year.
For the families who marked birthdays, anniversaries and retirements at the Inn Between over those fifty years, its closing is a real loss, and the town's calendar doesn't change that. What the calendar does show is where the rest of the year's gatherings are happening. Sidewalk sales and Fall Fest stayed on Main Street, and the sit-down tables for a crowd are now mostly at Township 5.
What's Still Just Down the Road
None of this means Main Street or the older parts of town went quiet. Second Chance Diner, open since 2018, is still the reliable stop for classic comfort food, the kind of place families return to without needing an occasion. Ninemile Creek, the 22-mile stream that runs from Otisco Lake to Onondaga Lake through the heart of town, is still drawing anglers along its banks the way it always has.
And if there's one seasonal window worth marking on the calendar before it closes, it's at Camillus Erie Canal Park, the Liz and Dave Beebe Park along the Empire State Trail. The narrated boat rides across the restored Nine Mile Creek Aqueduct, the only navigable stretch of historic Erie Canal in New York State, run Wednesdays and Sundays at 1, 2, and 3 p.m. through early October. That's a matter of days left this year, not weeks. After that, the aqueduct goes quiet until next May, and Sims' Store Museum becomes the only piece of the park still telling that story until the boats come back.
The Inn Between itself is still taking inquiries for 2026 and beyond, now for weddings, conferences and rehearsals, at 315-877-5847.
If you're the kind of Camillus resident who tracks which plaza opened what and which building on Main Street changed hands, reach out to Jeremy Allen with your questions about the Inn Between, Township 5, or the rest of what's changing in Camillus.
