- December 4, 2025
One of Ormond Beach's oldest restaurants is en route to a historic comeback later this fall — at least, that's what local developer Bill Jones has been working on for the past three years.
In 2022, Jones purchased Billy's Tap Room & Grill, located at 58 E. Granada Blvd., for $1.85 million from restaurateurs Doug and Lillian Rand, who had run the restaurant for 12 years. For Jones, restoring historic properties in Ormond Beach's downtown has become a labor of love, he said, over the past few decades. In his words, if there's a historic building that can be restored...
"I'm your huckleberry," Jones said. "I'm the guy who's going to do it."
So Jones set his sight on Billy's Tap Room, and the challenges that came with restoring a building constructed in 1920, with its 100-year-old iron pipes and cloth-insulated wiring.
"Honest to God, it was a demolition," Jones said. "It really would have been cheaper to demolish it and build it back, but then it wouldn't have been Billy's. That's my own stubbornness and my own feeling toward the place."
You can reproduce anything — kind of, Jones added.
"But it never has the spirits," he said. "It never has the ghosts. It doesn't have the tales — doesn't have that aura or feeling that you would have in a real, unique old building. So therefore, I was glad to get my hands on it because it wasn't cheap, but it was well worth everything I did to it."
Every square inch of Billy's Tap Room, with cardboard sheets on its windows hiding the work inside, has been scrutinized during the course of the last three years, Jones said.
He's not kidding. He's asked contractors to redo work because it didn't just need to meet his expectations. The work needed to honor the community as well.
"People are expecting something from Billy's that's going to go far beyond the opening of a new restaurant," Jones said. "They want their memories back."
William "Billy" MacDonald, the founder of Billy's Tap Room, came to Ormond Beach in 1922 after Hotel Ormond's managers invited him to manage their tea room,
according to the Ormond Beach Historical Society. At the time, MacDonald was serving as the lounge manager at the Astor and Plaza Hotels in New York City, and relocated south for the job.
Four years later, he purchased a building on East Granada Boulevard that once housed the Ormond Pharmacy and had an upstairs residence, where he then lived with his wife Elizabeth. MacDonald opened a combination drug store, soda fountain and restaurant in the building.
MacDonald then reshaped the property, unifying it with the Tudor Revival design that still stands today and is synonymous with Billy's Tap Room, as well as adding a one-story wing to the east along Halifax Avenue.
In the early days of his business, MacDonald sold fruit, jellies, newspapers, sandwiches and gifts, and the Historical Society states that, during Prohibition, "whispers of homemade beer and slot machines circulated, with patrons slipping through swinging doors unlocked by a button hidden behind the bar."
By the mid-1930s, the gift shop had been turned into a full restaurant.
“By 1937, with the end of Prohibition, the place was a true pub serving draft beer for a nickel and Manhattans for a quarter,” recalled Frank MacDonald, Billy’s eldest son, in the article by the Historical Society.
In 1939, the MacDonald family bought a nearby home — now known as the MacDonald House, which serves as the Historical Society's headquarters — for $3,900.
Frank and Billy Jr. MacDonald ran Billy's Tap Room until they retired in 1985. It was then run by the Young family, of New Jersey, for a short period, followed by Kathy Jones and then Monk Noell, who ran the restaurant for 17 years.
In 2006, the restaurant was purchased by Maria Azabad-Reisch, of Holland. In 2011, Billy's Tap Room was purchased by the Rands.
Once reopened, Billy's Tap Room will be run by restaurateur Joe Oliva, who opened Alexander's on the west side of downtown last year, another of Jones' historic restorations.
"He's doing a sterling, sterling job of [running Alexander's], and he's the only person that has the expertise, the knowledge and experience to really pull this off," Jones said.
Oliva said he feels very lucky to have the opportunity.
"Because of Bill, I have the two most iconic restaurants on the strip now, between Alexander's and Billy's," he said. "We're just going to try and keep the things that everybody loved about Billy's and make sure that when they come in, it gives them a little bit of nostalgia to see some of the old dishes still on the menu."
And Oliva has about 60 years' worth of menus to choose items for the reopening.
One of the questions Jones said he gets asked the most — aside from the opening date — is whether they're bringing back the relish tray, containing baby corn, gherkins, two olives and a radish.
The answer is yes, they are bringing it back.
"We're going to stay as true as we can to this building and to this history as we possibly can," Jones said.
As they worked on restoring the restaurant, Jones and his team talked to customers who remembered the heydays, family members and spoke with the Ormond Beach Historical Society.
"We did everything but have a seance, to be honest with you," Jones joked.
Restoring Billy's Tap Room is Jones' first foray into saving historic properties on the east side of the bridge. And he admitted — it's a project that makes him slightly nervous.
"Only because I feel there's a lot of history rested on my shoulders with this building," Jones said. "Everybody's got their [memories]. Ever since they held their mother's hand and came into the place 50 years ago, they've got ideas of what it should be, and I hope, I really hope I can hit and make them happy. That's what I'm going for."
Editor's note: This story was updated at 8:54 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept, 24, to remove an incorrect historical statement. A previous version of this story cited an article in which it stated Hotel Ormond founders Joseph Price and John Anderson invited Billy MacDonald to manage their tea room in 1922; the hotel's founders died in 1911. MacDonald was invited by the hotel's managers at the time.
