UPDATED: Negotiations on Red Cedar Inn end — for now

NOTE: Important update below.

A local museum apparently won’t be coming to the closed Red Cedar Inn restaurant in Pacific, Mo., because parties couldn’t come to a purchase agreement, reports the Tri-County Journal.

“Negotiations with the Smith family have ceased,” Adams said. “We could not come to an agreement on terms.”

City officials began talks with the Red Cedar owners in June.

The Red Cedar Inn, 1047 E. Osage St. (Old Highway 66), has been an area landmark for more than 70 years. Two brothers, James and Bull Smith, opened the Red Cedar in 1934, and the business stayed in the Smith family until it closed three years ago.

To say the least, this is a disappointing development.

UPDATE: I just got off the phone with Pacific’s city administrator, Harold Selby, and apparently the situation for the Red Cedar Inn isn’t as grim as the newspaper’s report may indicate.

Selby told me the city still wants to acquire the Red Cedar and move the local history museum into it. “We’re looking a other options and funding sources,” he said, including neighborhood-improvement tax credits.

Selby said he remains optimistic a deal can be struck with the Route 66 restaurant’s owners. It’s just that the city has to deal with a tangle of complications, including rehabiitation (especially in making it wheelchair-accessible) and that the property is in St. Louis County (nearly all of Pacific is in Franklin County).

Jim Smith, co-owner of the Red Cedar along with his sister Ginger Gallagher, told me the main holdup is one alderman who’s resistant to development. But Smith agreed with Selby’s assessment that a deal can be reached. “We’re not bitter and angry; we’re hopeful,” Smith added.

Smith says that there needs to be “an outcry of public support” for the city’s efforts to acquire the Red Cedar. With that, he’s the contact page of all of Pacific’s key officials, including the city council. You know what to do.