CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Five years after a doomed New York City landmark was rescued and hauled from the Big Apple to Wyoming, the diner made famous in movies and television appears kaput.
The Moondance Diner, known from the 2002 “Spider-Man” movie and TV shows including “Sex and the City” and “Friends,” has been put up for sale after a long period of slow business. And the owners say that so far they haven’t received a serious offer.
The restaurant arrived in LaBarge, Wyo., after New Yorkers raised a ruckus about the threat to the diner from developers who wanted it out of the way so they could build a high-rise condo.
The developers donated the eatery to the American Diner Museum, which in turn sold it to Cheryl and Vince Pierce, who in 2007 hauled the SoHo landmark 2,400 miles to their hometown out West.
It took a week to get the Moondance from the nation’s biggest city and its more than 8 million residents to the town of LaBarge, population 400.
The Pierces remodeled and opened the restaurant in 2009, but they say a lack of interest from tourists and a downturn in the natural gas industry have made it impossible to keep the doors open.
“I’ve put so much into it over the last five years, and I’m kind of tapped,” Cheryl Pierce said.
