Green River, WY
The sign on the door reads, "Help wanted: Join Team Moondance and Experience the Magic."

While the new owners of the historic Moondance Diner are cooking up some magic these days, it most likely won't be served up until later this fall.

The reconstruction and renovation is continuing on the Moondance Diner -- albeit not as fast as new owners Vince and Cheryl Pierce would like.

The couple bought the former New York dining icon last year and trucked it tiny LaBarge in southwest Wyoming in the summer of 2007. Renovations on the dining icon have been ongoing for nearly a year now.

"We're still cruising right now, and we are getting closer (to opening)," Pierce said in a phone interview last week.

"It has been a bit of a struggle for us, and everybody is wondering what's taking so long ... so many people from all over Wyoming and New York and Idaho and Utah have been calling and asking when are we going to open," she said.

"We're taking our time because we want to do it right and we want to do it correctly, and we wouldn't have it any other way," Pierce said. "But we are getting excited, and we can't wait to actually get in there and get started."

The Pierces saved the diner from its planned demolition when they purchased the Moondance for $7,500 and trucked it back to Wyoming.

For nearly a century, the diner sat near the Holland Tunnel entrance in the fashionable SoHo District in Lower Manhattan, serving up burgers to New York City's artists and actors, among others.

The diner's rescue and weeklong, 2,400-mile trek to Wyoming through nine states in August 2007 caught the interest of national media and sparked excitement among most Wyoming residents.

But financing, the collapse of most of the diner's roof due to a heavy January snow, and other setbacks pushed the LaBarge Moondance's planned opening back several times. Pierce said she hopes to open later this fall, perhaps by Halloween.

The couple was able to locate the original Moondance blueprints of the late architect/designer Alan Buchsbaum, who redid the interior of the diner in 1983.

"We're doing our best to do tribute to the Buchsbaum design with the main dining room," Pierce said. "Of course, the Moon room, which will be next to the patio, will be a completely creative design on our part."

Pierce said the most recent arrival was the dining booths for the restaurant, which will be stored with kitchen and other items until the new flooring is completed sometime next week.

Mayor still gets invite

While the impending opening of the Moondance is still generating a good deal of excitement in Wyoming, some in the New York media have already turned skeptical about the whole endeavor.

In a New York Daily News story titled, "Moondance diner gathering dust in Wyoming one year after move," writer Kristen Brown scoffed at the Pierces' effort to make the Moondance as much of an experience for local residents -- mostly blue-collar workers and truckers employed in the nearby gas fields -- as it was for high-class patrons in New York.

"Ah, yes, New York, where the customers were actors and directors, writers and dancers, artists and sculptors.

"Where episodes of 'Friends' and 'Sex in the City' were shot, where Kirsten Dunst, Spider-Man's gal, waited tables in real life before hitting the big time," Brown wrote in a story last month.

"Just what kind of experience the Moondance will be in reincarnation remains to be seen."

Pierce said she was a "little disappointed" by the article, but said it didn't really bother her. "I know the diner is not sitting there collecting dust," she said.

"We're working very, very hard to get the diner open and to make it better than it was when it got here ... it was pretty much held together by grease when it arrived here a year ago."

Regardless, Pierce said she still intends to invite New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to the grand opening that will be held sometime next summer.

In May, the mayor wrote the couple a congratulatory letter and offered his best wishes for the diner's future success. He described the diner as "sort of a bridge" between New York and Wyoming and predicted the Moondance would be "as beloved out West" as is was on the west side of Manhattan.

"Wouldn't that be something to have Bloomberg show up in LaBarge?" Pierce said.

Originally published online here: http://www.jacksonholestartrib.com/articles/2008/09/30/news/wyoming/525ce6a3ba56383b872574d1002115a9.txt