WEST HAVEN –Nick’s Luncheonette, whose following has filled the First Avenue restaurant for 25 years, will have to find a new address in West Haven by the end of summer.
Owner Nick Milas recently -- and reluctantly -- agreed to sell his property to the developer of an upscale, waterfront outlet mall.
“I think it's good for West Haven because it's going to hopefully bring in the good revenue more tax money,” said Karen Orlando, who says she will follow Nick's to wherever it reopens.
The Haven South mall, scheduled to be built of just over 24 acres of property, will feature 60 stores and seven restaurants, according to the developer, who projects $2 million in annual property taxes and the creation of 800 full-time and 400 part-time jobs.
“I understand they have to do things like this,” said Nick Martin, another longtime customer. “I just hope they give them (Nick’s) a good deal. It's not really the property. It's the business. The business is really valuable to him.”
Nick Milas, the owner, says he has verbally agreed to sell to the developer for roughly two and a half times the property’s value. It was either that or lose the property through eminent domain.
“Eminent domain was not meant for a mall,” said Chrissy Masselli, a longtime employee of Nick's Luncheonette. “It was meant for a highway, a railroad, a hospital, school. Not a mall. I don't believe you can take one man's business to put another business.”
Through eminent domain, the property could have been acquired for about half what Milas has verbally agreed to sell for.
“I'm comfortable to work here,” said Milas. “I love my customers. It's been like family to me, to us.”
The city says it will help find Nick’s Luncheonette a new home, but Milas is not happy. “We're never going to find another place like this,” he says.
Milas says he and his wife asked that their restaurant be incorporated in the new mall, but the developer declined.