Less than a year after taking the reins at Stacy’s Grill of Benton Harbor, it appears that “Nick” Arnold Nicholas is closing up shop.
The long-running restaurant at the corner of Colfax and Napier in Benton Harbor is now bracketed by storage pods from Sparkle-U-Stor-It in both the front and back parking lots, the telephone has been disconnected, and the establishment is dark.
Nicholas took the helm at the restaurant in mid-February last year (2019) and shortly thereafter plugged in his Lilli’s Pizza business to the building at 1699 Colfax Avenue.
That came after he had failed to pull the trigger on getting Lilli’s Pizza open for more than 2 years at the corner of Niles and Myrtle in the Southtown neighborhood of St. Joseph.
A lifetime building contractor, most recently as owner of Red Truck Services in St. Joseph, Nicholas had struggled with finances to get the pizzeria open and never made one at that site in the former St. Joseph Dairy Queen building despite prepping the building, posting signage and advertising it as “coming soon.”
When the opportunity arose to take over the long running Stacy’s Grill, he jumped in, and soon added the Lilli’s Pizza side of the house to the mix, but apparently has been unable to command a regular clientele, and now the business shows clear signs of coming to an end. The prior owners at Stacy’s had retired from the business.
Attempts to reach Nicholas have failed thus far, and the building’s owner/landlord says only that he’s awaiting “a ruling from the courts” at the end of the month. Stay tuned.
