Chumley's to Buy Chumley's Building?

The New York Times seems to have taken up the Chumley's story. It ran yet another article about the temporarily closed speakeasy—the victim of a derelict landlord and a collapsed chimney—on May 6. Who knows? Maybe, since the closure of The Lion's Head, a lot of Times reporters drink here.

Anyway, the most interesting part of the story mentions that the owners of the bar may soon buy the broken building from its present keeper, the much, and quite rightly, maligned Margaret Streicker Porres. Said the reportage:

The owners do not intend to keep Chumley’s closed forever, though. In fact, said Bill Butler, a real estate broker and a spokesman for the owners, they are in discussions — “very serious discussions, if you will” — to buy from the landlords the whole building, a former stable and blacksmith shop, and restore it.

“As a matter of fact,” Mr. Butler said, the bar owners are “awaiting an imminent contract of sale.”

Sounds good. This is the best news yet that Chumley's may indeed be saved. Streicker Porres never cared about the place. Let someone who does buy the building.