George Nicholas, who, along with his wife, Stacey, was the owner and operator of the Sunset Cove Marina and Cottages on Three Mile Harbor in Maidstone Park, East Hampton, died of complications from a fall on March 28. He was 83.
Sunset Cove, which the Nicholases had owned since 1979, was a home for local boat owners and also attracted glitterati such as the New York Times chef Pierre Franey and clients of the late Capt. Ken Rafferty, who ran a charter operation that brought the likes of Robert De Niro and Paul Simon to the dock.
Having grown up in a Miami Beach hotel, the Cornell School of Hotel Administration graduate was a natural born hotelier known for his hospitality. When the first boat owner arrived at the marina each spring, Mr. Nicholas would run out from his nearby house to the marina with a bottle of champagne to celebrate the start of the season. Before buying the marina, Mr. Nicholas had managed hotels and bought and sold properties in Miami and East Hampton.
He was an active member of the East Hampton Business Alliance and the Springs Improvement Society, and he and his family worked for many years behind the scenes on the annual Springs Fisherman’s Fair.
A natural sportsman, Mr. Nicholas excelled at tennis and was an award-winning member of the New York Athletic Club, placing in the Athlete of the Year competition. Long before rowing became popular, he started the East End Rowing Club with a friend and worked tirelessly to promote the sport.
In the mid-1980s, Mr. Nicholas’s love of tennis led to teaching East Hampton kids private tennis lessons. He was a competitive Ping-Pong player himself, and in his later years he underwrote the entrance fees to state competitions for a talented but underprivileged New York City high school player.
Mr. Nicholas became a member of the Greek Orthodox Church of the Hamptons in Southampton when it was founded in 1986 and the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in New York City, where he was president of the parish council for several years. To bring the two churches together, he set up an annual country mice versus city mice baseball game at Maidstone Park Beach Field that became so popular that the 100 or so players and visitors needed to move to a baseball diamond in Hampton Bays.
When the summer traffic prevented a car ride from Springs to Southampton, Mr. Nicholas would set up a prayer circle at the most scenic end of his marina for himself and his guests.
He was born on June 29, 1936, in Brooklyn to John and Kalliope Nicholas and graduated from high school in Miami Beach. He is survived by his wife, whom he married on Oct. 7, 1962, their children, John Nicholas of East Hampton and Kalli Nicholas Haeflein of Perkasie, Pa., and one grandchild. A sister, Thalia Routsis of Incline Village, Nev., also survives.
The Rev. Alex Karloutsos and the Rev. Constantine Lazarakis conducted a funeral, with online viewers, for Mr. Nicholas at the Greek Orthodox Church of the Hamptons on March 31.
