Mike's Pizza Wants a Bigger Slice of the Pie

A popular and longtime pizzeria in downtown Fairfield is hoping to grab a bigger slice of the pie, just as Colony Grill, a pizzeria, plans to open in a nearby building where Fairfield Stationers operated for about 50 years before moving to the Brick Walk Shopping Center earlier this year.

Mike's Pizza, which opened at 1560 Post Road in 1974, wants to expand into a vacant storefront next door that most recently housed a nail salon. The expansion would add about 220 square feet of dining space to the pizzeria.

Mike's planned expansion comes on the heels of a proposal by Ken Martin, Chris Drury, Cody Lee and Paul Coniglio to open Colony Grill at 1520 Post Road by the end of May. The four men were teammates on the Trumbull National Little League Team that won the 1989 Little League World Series, and Drury is now captain of the New York Rangers hockey team.

Patricia Ritchie, president and CEO of the Fairfield Chamber of Commerce, was happy Mike's was expanding, though she expressed concern whether three pizzerias - Domino's Pizza is on the other side of Mike's - could prosper so close together.

But Ritchie added, "Better than an empty storefront, and that's what we got now, and people love pizza...The more, the merrier."

"The fact they've been around forever, I'd like to see them stick around," Ritchie said of Mike's Pizza.

Martin wished Mike's well and said he and his co-owners are concentrating on opening Colony Grill. "They've got a good reputation," Martin said of Mike's.  "As neighbors, we wish them well and hope everybody is busy on the Post Road."

Before Mike's Pizza can expand, it needs approval from the town's Zoning Board of Appeals, an elected board of eight volunteer residents, because Mike's expansion requires six parking spaces and the business can provide only one.

Haralambos Giagkos of Monroe, Mike's owner, wasn't available this afternoon, but his application says most of the pizzeria's lunchtime business is from nearby office workers and merchants who walk to the pizzeria and that a lot of its business is takeout orders. The "sit-down" customers mostly come in the evenings when a lot of parking spaces are available in downtown Fairfield, the application says.

The ZBA is scheduled to hold a public hearing on Mike's proposed expansion at 3 p.m. May 6 in the Honorable John J. Sullivan Independence Hall. For Mike's expansion to win approval, four of five voting members on the ZBA have to approve it.