Fill-Up With Billups, the primarily breakfast restaurant on the Square, has been closed indefinitely by Oxford Building Official Chris Carter following an issue with the floor last weekend.
“In an abundance of caution for the public welfare, I felt that it was prudent to require further invasive evaluation before allowing the restaurant to resume operation,” Carter said in an emailed statement.
Carter was contacted early Sunday morning by Oxford Police Chief Jeff McCutchen with reports of a loud pop in the restaurant, which remains open until 2 a.m. Sunday. OPD noted “deflection and sponginess” in a public use area of the floor. “Deflection” refers to an unlevel surface caused by structural strain, and “sponginess” means that the floor was bouncy due to support failure.
Carter then evaluated the restaurant, although he was unable to access the underside of the floor to determine any structural damage. He has requested access from the restaurant to see the underfloor space and determine the exact cause of the issue.
“(How soon the restaurant can reopen) depends entirely on them,” Carter said. “I don’t want these guys shut down any longer than they absolutely have to be. If I could’ve figured out a way to keep it safe for the public, I wouldn’t have closed them to start with.”
Carter, who has the final say to allow the restaurant to reopen, will inspect the damages again, along with a structural engineer, to determine what must be done and again after the repairs to ensure they were sufficient for use by the public. He suspects the issue is the floor joists under the floor, which support the floor above the basement, and said that if the problem is not severe, it can be repaired in about a week. Floor joist repairs can range from a few hundred dollars to $10,000.
Carter does not believe the problem is related to the age of the building, which like others on the Square, can be more than 100 years old. He did, however, say that this was the first time in his experience as a building official to see an issue like this.
“I’ve been doing this for almost 18 years,” Carter said. “This is the first time that I’ve had this come up.”
Phillip Acosta, an engineer with W. L. Burle Engineers, an engineering consultant firm in Oxford, said that because of the type of issue, it is hard to make estimates about the severity of the damage.
“I think it’s probably one of those things where you don’t know how bad it is until you get in there and look at it.”
Acosta said two possibilities are an issue with the soil, in which the ground under the restaurant is giving way, or a foundation issue, meaning that the structural integrity of the floor is giving way. If Carter is right about the floor joists, Acosta said, then it is most likely a foundation issue.
Jessica Lynch, who is the partnerships manager at Visit Oxford, said that although drawing locals and visitors to Oxford and the Square is their goal, safety is the most important thing.
“Safety of our locals and trying to get visitors to come into town is our main concern,” Lynch said. “If the city did it for the safety of visitors, then that’s the peak concern, beyond any economic or commercial impact that we might see.”
Lynch expressed hope that Fill-Up with Billups will be able to have the repairs done and reopen quickly, so that the Square will not be without it for long.
“Hopefully it will be repaired quickly,” Lynch said. “If it’s (closed) a long period of time, that’s never a good thing for them or anyone else.”
The restaurant is owned in part by Guy Billups III, whose family founded Billups Petroleum in Carrolton, Mississippi, in 1927. He established Billups Coffee in 2014.
The other owner is Jourdan Nicaud, who previously started Bacchus On the Square in Oxford in 2016. That came after he opened his first restaurant 5 years earlier, Bacchus on the Beach, in Pass Christian, which serves as the chain’s primary location.
The partnership began when Billups began selling his coffee in the Bacchus restaurant in Oxford. When Nicaud decided to move Bacchus from Jackson Avenue to the Square in 2017, Billups and Nicaud created a restaurant and coffee merger that resulted in the first Fill-Up with Billups. Billups and Nicaud are both originally from the Mississippi Gulf Coast and are family friends.
Fill Up with Billups now has 3 locations: Oxford, Biloxi and Pass Christian. A Madison location opened in 2018 but is now closed. The Oxford restaurant also moved from Jackson Avenue to the Square in early 2019, when Nicaud closed Bacchus.
With the closure of Square sports bar Rowdy Rebs and Bacchus, Fill-Up with Billups is now Nicaud’s only location in Oxford and only location not on the Gulf Coast. Nicaud has also put his Oxford residence up for sale. The unit on Jackson Avenue East, which Lafayette County tax records confirm to be his, is listed on Zillow at $2.5 million. Nicaud does not include Fill-Up with Billups on his LinkedIn page, despite it including Bacchus On the Square and Rowdy Rebs.
Aside from Fill-Up with Billups, Nicaud Restaurants owns 4 other locations across Ocean Springs, Pass Christian, and Bay St. Louis, as well as a hotel in Pass Christian and a catering service on the Gulf Coast.
Billups and Nicaud could not be reached for comment.