Grafton Street--the four-year-old bar and grille that has become a symbol of family entrepreneurship in Harvard Square--will vacate its prime Mass. Ave location on April 15.

And the upscale bar might be forced to close its doors for good.

While owner Patrick Lee had hoped to evade the looming threat of leaving the Square by moving to the 1 Bow St. building that previously housed the storied Bow and Arrow Pub, he now says he fears that he will not have the financial capital to reopen.

"Given the time frame and economic realities, we don't know whether we're going to be able to do it," Lee says. "We're really at our wit's end here."

Packing Up Too Soon

The 31-year-old Boston native says that when he opened Grafton Street in Oct. 1996 with his brother and two friends, he had expected to stay in the Square for the long haul.

The restaurant that previously occupied the 1280 Mass Ave spot stayed for 50 years.

And Lee says T.H. Niles Real Estate Group, the building's owner, gave him the impression that Grafton Street could do the same.

"We had the perception that we'd have a lease here for a long time. If we had known what was going to happen, we just never would've opened," Lee says.

But Thomas H. Niles disagrees.

Niles says that in conversations with Lee, he was careful not to give the restaurant owner that impression.

When Lee moved into the Square, he signed on to a pre-existing lease for One Potato, Two Potato, the restaurant that had occupied the site.

From the beginning, Niles says, he was hesitant about having a restaurant as a tenant. No matter how clean a restaurant is, he says, there are always problems with odor and trash.

Before Grafton Street moved in, he says he was plagued by the smell of bacon in his office.

"Restaurants have been a huge problem in the building," Niles says.

So when the lease expired this past September, Niles says he simply decided not to keep a restaurant in the building--a possibility he says he had broached with Lee four years ago.