Mac's Isn't Closing. Nobody Has Named Its 2028 Address.

PROVINCETOWN · SHANK PAINTER ROAD

Mac Hay plans to move within Provincetown in 2028. Local permitting on the 52-home plan at his address is on hold.

4 min read · A Celebrate Lower Cape spotlight

Thirty-five gallons a day is what Provincetown's books allow for each seat at Mac's Fish House on Shank Painter Road. Multiply by 260 seats and you get 9,100, the allocation the town lists for the restaurant.

A proposal for the same address would trade those seats for 52 condominiums, 13 of them deed-restricted. Mac's has not gone anywhere. Owner Mac Hay plans to keep the year-round restaurant open in 2027 and move it to another Provincetown location in 2028, the Provincetown Independent reported, and the town calls him "a partner in the proposed redevelopment."

Nothing has been permitted, and no new address has been made public. But the town has already opened the books on this one, so it's fair to read them like a ledger.

Why 260 seats come to 9,100 gallons

The town's Sept. 14 notice lays it out in three lines:

• On the books: 260 restaurant seats at 35 gallons is 9,100 gallons a day.

• Projected: 79 bedrooms at 110 gallons is 8,690 gallons a day.

• Balance: 410 fewer gallons a day than the existing allocation.

"The proposed redevelopment therefore does not require additional gallons from the Town," the notice says.

Two cautions belong beside that line. These are allocations, capacity assigned by formula, and the notice reports nothing read from a meter. Developer David Goldman told the Independent the planned uses "would require less water than is now used by the restaurant," but no measured figure for the restaurant has been published in anything we read. Hay put the allocation at more than 9,000 gallons, the Independent reported, with "a bit more for the retail fish store," which the town's 9,100 doesn't break out.

As for scale, 410 gallons buys not quite four bedrooms at 110 apiece. The Independent reported town forecasts staying well within a state withdrawal capacity of 850,000 gallons a day.

"No money from the state"

Hay's pitch to the board on Aug. 13 was about who pays. "This is a significant number of affordable housing units that require zero taxpayer dollars," he said, as the Independent quoted him. "No money from the state, no money from the town: they're subsidized by the higher-end units in the building." Town Planner Thaddeus Soulé noted that the project must provide 20 percent and proposes 25.

How the owner of a seafood restaurant landed in that room is the best detail in the minutes. Goldman told the board he connected with Hay while reaching out to abutters for his team's Capt. Bertie's development, the 36-unit building rising behind Mac's, whose 10 affordable condos CLC noted in September. Hay said he'd been considering relocating.

The board took no vote, and it asked its own questions. "Our first concern was that we love Mac's and don't want it to go away," Chair Stephen Roope said, according to the Independent. Barbara Browning raised where the restaurant would go. Hunter Gaiotti called the plan "a huge opportunity" and predicted "a lot of discussion about traffic on Captain Bertie's Way." Michael Gaucher suggested deed restrictions barring short-term rentals, and Goldman said he'd "abide by the town's rules and regulations."

Six studios the town hasn't counted

The September ledger rests on 79 bedrooms. The Independent's Nov. 4 story describes a plan of 6 studios, 17 one-bedrooms, and 29 two-bedrooms. That's still 52 homes, and the bedroom count is ours to work out, because nobody has published a new one.

Twenty-nine twos and 17 ones make 75 bedrooms. Count each studio as a bedroom and it's 81, or 8,910 gallons, still 190 under the allocation. We couldn't find how the town's formula treats a studio, so that's our arithmetic, and we found no published figure for the gallery floor.

Other things moved too. After Soulé's advice in August, Goldman brought gables and two-over-two windows to the board on Oct. 22. "Almost the entire first floor is now a retail art gallery space," he said, and six affordable artist living spaces come with work areas behind the galleries. Seven of the 13 deed-restricted homes would be on the upper floors. The six artist spaces may account for the rest, though the story doesn't say so.

The address nobody has named

On Sept. 14 the town said the project hadn't been formally filed. The planning board's Oct. 22 agenda then listed case PLN-26-23, a vote on referring 85 on Shank Painter, LLC to the Cape Cod Commission as a Development of Regional Impact. The agenda says town review is suspended until the Commission reviews and approves a project of that kind. The Independent reported Nov. 4 that local permitting is on hold, with the board's site plan work to follow.

The paper trail thins there. We didn't find Oct. 22 minutes or a report of the vote itself, the Commission's Oct. 28 regulatory update doesn't list the project, and we found no Commission hearing date.

The restaurant's part is thinner still. The August minutes have Mac's operating at the site through next season, and Hay confident of a new home before construction begins. The town says he's committed to remaining in Provincetown. Mac's own history calls the Fish House, opened in 2013, the company's first year-round restaurant. Readers of our chowder argument know Hay as a man with firm views on flour.

Seats on the town's books: 260. Addresses published for 2028: none.

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