 <p>There is a conflict with concurrent gradle versions:</p> <blockquote> <p>java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException: org.gradle.tooling.BuildException: Could not execute build using Gradle distribution '<a href="https://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-2.9-all.zip" rel="nofollow">https://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-2.9-all.zip</a>'.</p> </blockquote> <p>In quoted <code>gradle.properties</code> you've changed gradle version (gradleWrapperVersion) which was set to 2.9 for Grails 3.1.6 projects:</p> <p><a href="https://github.com/grails/grails-core/tree/v3.1.6/gradle/wrapper" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/grails/grails-core/tree/v3.1.6/gradle/wrapper</a></p> <p>Change it to defualt value and clean&amp;build.</p>