Former Lia’s Mountain View Restaurant May Get New Life as Music, Food, and Dancing Venue

The Tin Barn in Clermont is exactly what its name suggests: a tin barn.

But over the last year, Angela Somma has turned the Route 9 property into something more ambitious — a lively gathering place for live bands, DJs, food trucks, drinks, and dancing.

Now she is preparing to bring that spirit to one of Pine Plains’ most familiar commercial properties.

Somma, who runs the Tin Barn, sells real estate with Coldwell Banker and manages Somma Construction with her husband, John, is under contract to buy the former Lia’s Mountain View Restaurant at 7685 Route 82 for $725,000. Her plan is not to reopen Lia’s, but to create a flexible venue where residents and visitors could stop in during the week for a drink and a limited menu, then return on weekends for bands, DJs, pop-up dining, brunches, markets, and private events.

“I’ve always hosted parties, even as a young child,” said Somma, who lives near Livingston, in Columbia County, where she grew up in a large Italian-Irish family with roots in the Bronx.

Her vision for Pine Plains includes community events, conferences, plays, sweet 16 parties, weddings, karaoke nights, battle-of-the-bands contests, and family-friendly gatherings, with an outdoor kitchen on the property’s broad lawn.

It may sound expansive. But Somma has already tested much of the idea about 15 miles northwest, at the Tin Barn.

“Growing up here there was nothing to do, and parties would be in the woods somewhere,” she recalled. “Around 2021, six or seven of my friends and I would just look around for places to go dancing, but if we found something, the DJs were terrible, or the bands you couldn’t really dance to. So I was looking for a barn to hold Friday night dances. My friends thought I was crazy. One attorney friend told me, ‘You’re not gonna make any money,’ and I’m like, ‘I don’t want to make money, I just want to dance.’”

The search led her to Ray Tousey, a local beekeeper and businessman who owns the historic Tin Barn in Clermont. Tousey had permits to host events there, but the building remained vacant.

“We walked into the barn together the day before Thanksgiving 2023 and I looked around and told him what I wanted to do,” Somma said. “He’s like, ‘Have at it.’ We didn’t even talk money right then.”

Somma rented the barn and, with help from her husband and friends, began fixing it up. The first floor became a dance space with a bar serving beer and wine. Upstairs, she created a quieter area for drinks and conversation, where she said her husband tends to gather with friends who are less interested in dancing. A former children’s playhouse became a small shop for merchandise, and a food truck on the property gives vendors without trucks a way to serve food.

The Tin Barn opened May 18, 2024.

“We had no idea this was going to take off,” Somma said. “We were kind of winging it, close friends and family. We advertised on social media, hired an expensive DJ, and held our breath.”

The response was immediate.

“Cars just started pouring in—the parking lot was full. We were shocked. Word spread. Soon, we were getting like 150 to 200 people at every event.”

By the second year, the Tin Barn had worked its way into the schedules of local bands, including Guilty Pleasure, In the Dust, Second Chance, the Jukebox Junkies, and Eli’s Gin. A daylong battle of the bands was especially popular.

“I really love high-energy bands and DJs,” Somma said. “I like to see people have fun and dance.”

The food side developed more gradually. At first, many food trucks were already booked. Eventually, the Tin Barn began scheduling Aloha Tacos, VanRoy’s Caribbean Grill, Almas Tacos, This and That Food Truck, and others.

Still, Somma said she has long wanted a place of her own.

“I’ve managed and run many businesses, but I’ve never had my own,” she said.

Her bar manager at the Tin Barn told her about a property in Pine Plains that had recently come back on the market: Lia’s Mountain View Restaurant, a local institution founded by Sicilian immigrants Giuseppe “Joe” Mirto and Antonina “Nina” Mirto.

Lia’s served its last meal Dec. 30, 2023, after four decades in business. The 3.1-acre commercial property was purchased in January 2024 by Irene and Jack Banning for $625,000 after the retirement of the Mirto family, who had operated the restaurant for decades.

The Bannings renovated the brick-and-wood-frame building, which was originally constructed in 1990, and reopened it as Mountain View Events, a wedding and event venue. The work included raising the ceiling in the dining room, removing carpeting, polishing the concrete floors, adding new paint, lighting fixtures and furniture, and renovating a bridal suite with a kitchenette and bathroom.

But a shift toward smaller weddings made the business unsustainable, Irene Banning told the Herald in January, and the property was listed for $845,000. It is now under contract to sell to Somma for $725,000.

The site includes a large kitchen, tavern with bar seating, dining room, parking lot and lawn — a layout Somma said matched what she had been imagining.

When Angela and John Somma toured the property, she said, “We were like, it’s beautiful. It’s perfect for what I have in mind. We wanted a lawn, because we want to be able to have music outside. The dining room is separate from the outside, so multiple things could be going on at the same time.”

Somma said she hopes to open six days a week, though not as a traditional restaurant.

“I’m not a chef and I don’t want a restaurant. It’s not going to be Lia’s, unfortunately,” she said.

On weeknights, she envisions a small staff — “maybe a bartender and another staff member, probably me,” she said — serving a limited menu.

“We might do music Bingo, karaoke nights, things like that,” she said.

On weekends, Somma said, she would like to use the kitchen for pop-up dining, including guest chefs and possibly former members of Lia’s staff, if they are interested.

“We can bring in food trucks, or if they don’t have a food truck, we could open up the kitchen,” she said.

Live music and dancing would be central to the plan.

“We’re going to keep both locations, and I’m talking with a bus company to see about busing our people from the Tin Barn to Pine Plains. It’s our dream to have outdoor bands, with an outdoor kitchen and bar—weather permitting, of course. But we have a big kitchen in case we need to go indoors. On Sundays, we want to do brunches.”

As at the Tin Barn, Somma said she expects to provide quieter spaces for people who want to eat, drink or talk without dancing. Monthly pop-up farmers markets are also under consideration. Longer term, she said, she would like to build tiny homes that could be rented for weddings or other events, though she said those plans “are definitely going to be a second phase.”

Before any of that can happen, several pieces still have to fall into place.

Somma has received final bank approval for her business loan and expects to finalize the purchase this summer. She said she plans to apply for a liquor license right away.

The property also sits within a zoning framework that town officials have been working to clarify: The former Lia’s Mountain View site is split between two zoning districts. On May 21, the Pine Plains Town Board passed a resolution advancing a proposed amendment for properties divided by zoning district lines, and a public hearing on the measure has been set for June 18. Rather than redraw the town’s zoning map, the amendment would allow the owner of a split-zoned property to apply to the Zoning Board of Appeals for an area variance to develop the full parcel under the less restrictive zoning regulations, when applicable. Town Attorney Warren Replansky has described the proposal as a simpler way to address divided parcels without a more complex and expensive zoning map change.

Somma said she also wants to coordinate with other Pine Plains businesses rather than compete with them for the same nights. She said she already does that near the Tin Barn, coordinating with Vosburgh Brewing in Elizaville to avoid conflicts with live events.

“If Tower’s Pizza’s Back Bar Beer Garden is having parties with bands on Friday night, we won’t have a band that night. We want to be part of the community,” she said.

“Whatever the town needs, we would consider. We’re pretty good at pivoting.”

For now, Somma said the renovations she has in mind are relatively modest: painting, decorating, and giving the former restaurant and event space a more “rustic and barn-like” feel.

“We’d love to be open for the fall,” she said.