Potential buyers for the Brass Elephant, who failed to come up with a deposit Monday, still want to go ahead with the deal, Randy Stahl told me on the phone just a few minutes ago.
Stahl is part owner of the shuttered Mount Vernon restaurant. He was the restaurant's chef from 1980 until 2000. And he still hopes to play another role for the Brass Elephant, that of seller.
He thought he was on his way to becoming that Monday, when an investment group that had signed a contract on the building a month ago was supposed to put down a deposit. The money never came.
But Stahl told me the deal is not dead.
"They still have interest in buying. I still have interest in selling," he said. "They just need another 30 days. They told me something happened up in New York with one of the partners."
He didn't have any more details on that.
While not exactly welcome, the delay has given Stahl time to straighten out a problem he did not want to hang over the deal: a whopping water bill.
The city billed the Brass Elephant $4,700 for the past quarter, he said, "twice what any normal usage is when we were fully open."
"The restaurant wasn't even open," he said.
I caught Stahl on his cell phone as he was leaving the city Water Department, where he'd gone after failing to straighten out the bill via e-mail. The department promised to send someone over to read the meter.
"I couldn't go to closing with that amount of money owed to the city," he said.
Now, if the putative buyers would just do their part to get ready for closing.
Cioppino, Randy Stahl and the Brass Elephant. Photo by Patrick Sandor