He Said Construction Was Killing His Biz. Filings Reveal a More Complicated Situation.

Several days before the Gryphon closed last month, the Burlington restaurant’s owner, Tom Chadwick, called a meeting with his small staff. The gathering was unusual: Chadwick lived out of state and was no longer a regular presence at the dinner-and-drinks spot that he opened in 2014 at the southeast corner of Main and St. Paul streets.

But employees weren’t surprised by his dire message. For months, Chadwick had been complaining that sales were suffering as a result of downtown construction work that closed traffic for weeks at a time. He’d made public appeals for customers and solicited donations online.

He trimmed the restaurant’s operating hours and asked employees to accept wages through Venmo instead of direct deposit. He told the Burlington Free Press in June that diners were staying away because downtown Burlington, which has also been beset by growing problems of homelessness and open-air drug use, had come to resemble a “dystopian cesspool of a failed city.”

“I’m in small-business hell,” Chadwick told the paper.

During the August 31 meeting, three employees recalled to Seven Days, Chadwick explained that he might soon need to shut down and file for bankruptcy. Yet he asked his workers to stick with the Gryphon in hopes that the restaurant could survive until October, traditionally its most profitable month. Chadwick promised to “do everything possible” to ensure that even if the Gryphon closed, employees would get paid on time for their work, server Fiona Medeiros said.

Less than a week later, however, Chadwick shuttered the Gryphon and told employees that he could not make payroll. Medeiros, a University of Vermont student, would not be paid for 62 hours of work, leaving her without $2,500 that she was counting on to pay rent.

Records show that Chadwick was making key decisions about the restaurant’s fate as he lost legal battles to fend off the other, unrelated debts.

Outward appearances suggest the Gryphon was the latest casualty of what has been a difficult time for small businesses downtown. It is not the only restaurant to close, and some others that remain have been vocal about their financial distress. But the picture is more complicated. The Gryphon’s financial health deteriorated at the same time that Chadwick was contending with intensifying efforts to compel him to pay millions of dollars in restitution stemming from allegations that he had mishandled clients’ money in his separate work as an investment adviser.

Seven Days reviewed hundreds of pages of court records and business filings and interviewed state regulators and former employees to better understand the Gryphon’s demise. These records show that Chadwick was making key decisions about the restaurant’s fate as he lost legal battles to fend off the other, unrelated debts. On the day before Chadwick closed the restaurant, a judge in New Hampshire ordered him to begin making monthly payments toward one of his multimillion-dollar obligations.

A bankruptcy filing halts that repayment process. The shuttered restaurant owes $75,000 in local, state and federal taxes, while Medeiros and 11 other employees are collectively owed $25,000 in unpaid wages and tips, bankruptcy papers indicate.

Chadwick told Seven Days by email that the Gryphon’s failure was caused solely by construction-related disruptions. He did not respond to other questions about the circumstances surrounding the abrupt decision to close the restaurant.

Chadwick, 55, of New London, N.H., opened the Gryphon 11 years ago in the 115-year-old Vermont House building with his then-wife, Paige. The restaurant boasted an upscale dining room with casual fare, making it a favorite stop for guests headed to shows at the nearby Flynn. In the years that followed, the Chadwicks also took over a well-known New London restaurant called Peter Christian’s Tavern and the attached Edgewood Inn.

At the same time, Chadwick ran an investment management and financial advisory firm called Chadwick & D’Amato, which worked primarily with elderly and retired clients from Vermont and New Hampshire. He initially placed much of his clients’ money into an investment fund that he also controlled. Chadwick kept client money in that fund, earning additional management fees, even though the fund underperformed, without disclosing his conflict of interest, according to the findings of an independent arbitrator who later mediated one client’s claims against Chadwick.

His mismanagement of client funds grew “particularly egregious” in 2019 and 2020, the arbitrator found. Chadwick placed large amounts of his clients’ money into a single, exceptionally risky investment product. The product, a double-leveraged real estate fund, tanked at the pandemic’s onset, and his clients lost millions overnight. In awarding $1.2 million to a former client in 2022, the arbitrator who reviewed the chain of events described Chadwick’s investment decisions as “unhinged.”

At the same time, state securities regulators in Vermont and New Hampshire each took enforcement action against Chadwick. In June 2023, the New Hampshire Bureau of Securities Regulation accused Chadwick of “widespread investment adviser fraud” in connection with the risky real-estate fund and sought more than $11 million in restitution for his clients.

While New Hampshire regulators were investigating, they discovered that Chadwick had recently transferred ownership of his New Hampshire businesses and real estate via his divorce. Regulators also told a New Hampshire judge that Chadwick had sold some real estate and made cryptocurrency transfers. Convinced that he was improperly “dissipating” his assets, the regulators obtained a court order to stop Chadwick from making further financial moves.

Vermont regulators settled with Chadwick in December 2023. More than 20 Vermont clients had been affected by his investment decisions, including an 84-year-old Strafford woman who lost nearly $350,000 that she needed to pay for assisted living and a retired Reading couple who are out $900,000. As part of the settlement with regulators, Chadwick agreed to pay $1.6 million in restitution to Vermont clients within 60 days.

Chadwick settled separately with New Hampshire in April 2024, agreeing to pay more than $4.8 million in restitution to his clients in that state. In neither settlement did he admit wrongdoing.

However, Chadwick never made any of the agreed-upon restitution payments. Nearly a year after Vermont settled its case, state regulators took $339,000 in proceeds from other enforcement cases to provide partial compensation to Chadwick’s Vermont clients. The Vermont Department of Financial Regulation declined to discuss the case but pointed to provisions in state law that allow the department to compensate victims of financial misdeeds who demonstrate that they are unlikely to receive the full amount they’re owed.

But the State of New Hampshire and at least one former client turned to the courts to pressure Chadwick to pay.

Last fall, the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that Chadwick could reasonably pay $11,000 per month to a former client after a lower court judge reviewed Chadwick’s finances, including the Gryphon’s balance sheet. The Gryphon had turned a net profit of nearly $200,000 in 2021 and at least $150,000 in 2022, the judge wrote. In addition, Chadwick received housing, a car and a $30,000 salary from Peter Christian’s Tavern, which he still managed in 2023 even though the business had been transferred to his ex-wife.

Then New Hampshire petitioned a court for help enforcing its $4.8 million restitution order against Chadwick. Five days later, on April 8, the Gryphon posted a public plea to customers on its social media accounts. The open letter said the Main Street reconstruction project threatened to sink most downtown businesses, including the Gryphon, and complained that city officials had not taken steps to help. Chadwick then launched a GoFundMe campaign soliciting $50,000 in contributions to help keep the restaurant afloat.

The fundraiser brought in just $1,800, though its 21 donors included U.S. Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), a frequent patron who owns an apartment in the same building. He chipped in $200.

Chadwick told the Burlington Free Press that business had dropped by 30 percent in the first half of 2025. Employees who spoke with Seven Days agreed that business was down. “Absolutely there was an impact,” Medeiros said.

Many of the employees stayed with the restaurant during the difficult final stretch. The small staff was tight and ran the business without much on-site presence from Chadwick. “It was a special job,” Medeiros said. “We all really cared, and we all tried.”

“I trusted if we just hung in until October that things would turn around,” she said.

Chadwick reduced the restaurant’s hours and staffing, employees said. He instituted purchasing limits that left employees struggling to order enough food for diners, said one longtime manager, who asked not to be named for fear of further jeopardizing his ability to collect unpaid wages.

By then, Chadwick was spending much of his time in Florida, three of the Gryphon’s employees believed.

When Gryphon employees said that Chadwick met with them in person on August 31 and encouraged them to carry on, an important hearing before a New Hampshire judge was just days away. On September 4, the judge took testimony on the state’s motion to compel Chadwick to begin making periodic payments toward the restitution he owed. Chadwick submitted financial documents to the court showing that the Gryphon had turned a $98,000 net profit during 2024 but had lost $25,000 so far in 2025.

During the hearing, Chadwick did not mention that he was considering bankruptcy, New Hampshire Bureau of Securities Regulation director Eric Forcier said. At the hearing’s conclusion, the judge ordered Chadwick to begin paying $300 per month toward restitution pending further proceedings, senior staff attorney Brian Linares said.

The next day, September 5, Chadwick told employees he was closing the Gryphon and would file for bankruptcy, three employees said. He filed three separate bankruptcy petitions in the days that followed: for himself, the Gryphon and the holding company that owned the restaurant’s real estate.

The petitions portray the businesses and Chadwick as broke. He listed no personal income and only $115 in cash on hand against nearly $10 million in debts. The restaurant entities Chadwick owned had used equipment and real estate equity worth about $683,000 but liabilities totaling $875,000.

Chadwick checked a box indicating that no money would be available to distribute to unsecured creditors, including the financial misconduct victims.

The timing of the bankruptcy filings “heightens our sensitivities and concerns” that Chadwick might be managing his assets in a way aimed at avoiding paying restitution, Forcier said.

The Gryphon employees who spoke to Seven Days said they don’t know if they will ever be paid for their work. “I definitely felt a little bit taken advantage of,” Medeiros said.

Caroline Moino, 26, a server and manager-on-duty, said she is owed more than $4,000 for three weeks of work. The Gryphon’s final weeks included the busy return to school. Moino said she earned more than she ever had since joining the Gryphon staff in 2022.

“I was very excited to get that paycheck,” she said.

The original print version of this article was headlined “The Gryphon’s Fall | A businessman asked Burlingtonians to save his downtown restaurant after he racked up debts elsewhere”