The Phoenix Bar & Grill: the room in the building the fire raised

Building 1873; the room 2002 — 2026

The shell: At 101 Lincolnway West stands the building this section's downtown story hangs on. On the night of 5 September 1872 the city's great fire began in a barn on West Second Street and destroyed 49 buildings and 82 businesses at a loss put at $140,000 — the fire's full record is the Fire & Safety section's — and in 1873 John Niles, Henry Niles, Joseph Burt and Buford Holcomb built the Phoenix Building on the burned ground, naming it for the rising. The building's nineteenth- and twentieth-century lives were the downtown's own: an opera house, the First National Bank of Mishawaka, and the Century Club, "a social club and community space" (the member clubs are Private Clubs' ground; the line stands here because the room's later use descends from it). In the 1980s the building burned again while housing the Covey Restaurant, and stood vacant after.

The room: Don Kelly, a Californian whose nightclubs there had been called The Warehouse, bought the Phoenix Building in 1988; it sat vacant until his son Rich Kelly converted it in 2001, and the Phoenix Bar & Grill officially opened in 2002 — the name doubling the building's own. The Tribune's feature of 2 November 2026 preserves, in Rich Kelly's own account, the license economics that shaped the modern trade: when he started, Mishawaka liquor licenses "were going for $300,000" — a quota price that kept new rooms out of reach — "and they started doing the riverwalk licenses in 2000. That made everything much more doable." The riverwalk license, the state's instrument for the riverfront districts then being built (the Riverwalk is the Parks & River section's), is the documented hinge between the licensed scarcity of the old neighborhood trade and the downtown room that replaced it. Kelly bought out his partners in 2011. The Phoenix's trade is the live-music room downtown: it stands in the Death March roster of 2004, two years after opening, and in 2026 it was the march's documented terminus, where a good chunk of the 500 walkers ended their night. One closing line: the Phoenix Bar & Grill stands at 101 Lincolnway West, operating in November 2026.

Sources:

1. South Bend Tribune (2 November 2026), the Phoenix feature, read in full: the Phoenix Building of 1873, built by John Niles, Henry Niles, Joseph Burt and Buford Holcomb after the fire of 5 September 1872 (49 buildings, 82 businesses, $140,000); the opera house, First National Bank and Century Club tenancies; the Covey Restaurant fire of the 1980s; Don Kelly's purchase in 1988; Rich Kelly's conversion in 2001 and the 2002 opening; the $300,000 license market and the riverwalk licenses from 2000, in Kelly's own words; the 2011 buyout; the 2026 Death March terminus. Fire & Safety section of this history — the 1872 fire's record; the Death March account (2004) — the Phoenix in the roster.