When the vintage factory-built Cheyenne Diner near Penn Station closed last April after 68 years in business, widespread dismay was quickly replaced with hope when a Red Hook man bought it for $5,000 and promised to move the prefab gem across the East River. But it's been almost nine months since the closure, and the diner's gone nowhere because, as it turns out, it's too big to be moved over the Manhattan Bridge, even in two pieces.
The next-best option would be to relocate the Cheyenne to the Brooklyn waterfront via barge; that would require transporting it to a pier on the Hudson River and using cranes to load it and unload it. But new owner Michael O’Connell tells Chelsea Now that's probably cost-prohibitive: "We’re going to see what the financial feasibility is of moving it that way. If not, we’ll just scrap the whole idea of moving it."
George Papas, the man who owns the site still occupied by the shuttered Cheyenne, insists he's "going to give them as much time as they need" to figure out a solution, but also says he wants the diner gone "within a couple months" so he can begin construction on a nine-story residential building. A third option under consideration would be to move a few of the Cheyenne's most iconic parts piece-by-piece and scrap the rest. Naturally the bottom line trumps nostalgia; O'Connell flatly adds that "if it’s not economically feasible, then we’re not going to do it."
Photo courtesy Triborough.
