Lighthouse restaurant closes after four years

• Lighthouse on Homestead

The Lighthouse on Homestead restaurant and bar has been a community meeting place since it opened in 2007. It closed last Wednesday. Photo from Forum Newspapers.

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The Lighthouse on Homestead, a Duluth Township restaurant and bar south of Knife River, has closed.

The four-year-old, family owned and operated business served its last meal last Wednesday.

It didn’t close because of business being down, said co-owner Andrea Darsow. “Business had been fantastic, actually,” she said. The closure was the result of bank action, family members said.

“It was very sudden. It wasn’t in the cards,” said Darsow, who co-owns the restaurant with her mother, Brita Aug, and two aunts, Lynne Compton and Claire Secking-er.

On their Facebook page for the restaurant, the owners talk about tough economic times.

“Back when the economy crashed, our financial institution worked with us to lower our interest rates in order to survive the changing economic times. ... they recently decided they needed to bring our rates back up to a rate our numbers and the economy were not ready to support.”

The three sisters and daughter started the lighthouse-shaped restaurant and bar with a nautical theme at 5730 Homestead Road in June 2007. They sought to fill a community void left by the closing of the Shorecrest Supper Club two years earlier.

Like the Shorecrest, they wanted to create a restaurant for locals that would serve as a community gathering spot.

All four grew up close to the restaurant’s site and still live nearby. All had worked at Betty’s Pies north of Two Harbors in jobs from server to general manager.

The four women had worked more than two years to make the Lighthouse restaurant a reality. Although they had trouble convincing banks that they knew what they were doing, people living nearby were supportive. Neighborhood women planted flowers outside the restaurant.

Neighbors donated old pictures, fishing nets and other fishing memorabilia.

Tags: lighthouse on homestead, two harbors, community, news, business, restaurant, economy