GREEN RIVER - The famed Moondance Diner survived nearly a century of service, a close date with a wrecking ball and a 2,400-mile cross-country move from New York City to Wyoming last year.

What it hadn't experienced was a Wyoming winter.

Parts of the roof and walls of the diner collapsed under the weight of fresh snow on Thursday in LaBarge, its new home. The structure, though damaged, was not totally destroyed.

The new owners vowed Friday to continue with the renovation of the famed New York eatery and said they will open the restaurant this spring or early summer, as planned.

"This is just one of those things that happens," said new owner Cheryl Pierce, who with husband Vince bought the Moondance Diner last year and relocated the structure to LaBarge.

"The game's still on, and we're just moving on to plan B … We're still ready to go, and we're more determined than ever to open those doors for business in May or June," she said in a phone interview Friday.

"Come hell or high water, we will open those doors for the Moondance Diner in Wyoming."

Located on Sixth Avenue in New York City's fashionable SoHo District, the Moondance Diner stood for nearly a century near the Holland Tunnel entrance in lower Manhattan. One of the last free-standing diners in New York City, the famed eatery served up cheeseburgers, fries, homemade milkshakes and malts to working-class New Yorkers for decades before it gained national fame after being featured in the film "Spider-Man" and in numerous TV episodes.

The grand old dame became a victim of the times, however, and was scheduled last spring for demolition to make room for condominiums.

The Pierces had been looking for an eatery investment for restaurant-starved LaBarge last summer when they spotted the diner for sale on the Web site of the American Diner Museum in Providence, R.I. The couple decided to rescue the Moondance and purchased it for $7,500.

Vince, who drives service trucks for the oil and gas industry in southwest Wyoming, and father-in-law Kent Profit drove back to New York in August to collect the diner. After a three-day bureaucratic snarl over city permits and a torrential rainstorm briefly delayed the project, the pair loaded the diner onto a trailer and trucked the Moondance through nine states to its new home in LaBarge.

The weeklong trek caught the interest of New York and other media and sparked excitement among Wyoming residents.

The couple bought a double lot in downtown LaBarge where the new diner will sit. Pierce said workers are close to completing the construction of the diner's new foundation.

No injuries

Pierce said there were several workers inside the diner when the damage occurred around 4 p.m. on Thursday. "Nobody got hurt, that was the main thing," she said.

Some of the renovation work, including the removal of several layers of floor, had been completed when the snow collapsed a portion of the barrel-roof and wall, she said.

The couple had planned on using a crane later this spring to lift the entire structure onto the new foundation, but will now move it over in pieces instead.

"Basically, we were rebuilding a lot of the structure anyway, so we're at a point where we're OK with this," Pierce said.

She noted the diner's most prominent feature - the huge, revolving, crescent-shaped moon sign that's being lovingly refurbished piece by piece by Vince - is still intact and is stored in the couple's garage.

"It's probably about 80 percent of the recognizability of the diner, anyway," she said.

Pierce said despite the setback, people shouldn't think the diner is done for, or will be somehow different from the original Moondance when it opens.

"To be honest, the building itself was not as much the Moondance Diner as it was the people that frequented it and all the history that's come with it," she said.

"My feeling is that the real value of the building is the history of it and the effort that we've put into it, and that's still going on, just like a house isn't really a home until you move in. It's the same with the diner."

Southwest Wyoming bureau reporter Jeff Gearino can be reached at 307-875-5359 or at gearino@tribcsp.com.