Silver Top set to hit auction block Out-of-commission diner will be available for purchase on Oct. 5

PAWTUCKET – With the legal battle having come to an end, the historic Silver Top Diner will hit the auction block next month, as members of the Pawtucket Redevelopment Agency and consultants for the city hope to bring it back to its previous glory, possibly in Pawtucket.

The auction will take place at 10 a. m. on Wednesday, Oct. 5 at the site of the diner, which currently sits on a vacant plot of land on Middle Street in Pawtucket.

“The next step in the diner saga is about to take place,” Mike Cassidy, a planning consultant for the city and the city’s former Planning Director, said. “It’s nice after starting this project, to see it looking like it’s coming to some resolution, getting it back somewhere and maybe even up and operating.”

Cassidy said his long-term goal is to see the diner returned to its former lore – as a fully-functioning diner in which to serve hungry patrons. He said he would “hate to lose that valuable piece of Americana.”

Susan Mara, the city’s acting director of Planning and Redevelopment and the acting executive director of the Pawtucket Redevelopment Agency, said that the Silver Top hitting the auction block is “a good thing all around.”

“I think it’s a great opportunity for the diner itself to be reused, it’s really a neat piece,” Mara said. “It’s an opportunity to be reused. I think it’s a good opportunity, it frees up lots for potential redevelopment on those sites, it’s a good opportunity overall.”

Mara agreed that the ideal situation would be that the diner is sold to someone who intends to keep it in Pawtucket.

“It would be great if it was purchased with the idea to reuse in Pawtucket. We’d absolutely be willing to work with them,” Mara said. “In general, the diners were real popular, but there are not that many left of them. We’re lucky we have the Modern Diner in Pawtucket, it’s an awesome example of how it can be preserved and reused.”

However, Mara said that the city will be willing to work with whoever purchases it, as the city is now participating as a supporter in the aftermath of the legal battle over the diner’s future.

In November 2015, a Superior Court jury rejected diner owner Patricia Tomasso-Brown’s claims that the PRA was negligent because it failed to properly manage the funds loaned to her by the agency to resurrect the idle restaurant as a going business. She was seeking monetary damages from the PRA, but the jury ruled in favor of the defendants and she received no award.

The legal feud involved a $100,000 loan the PRA made to Tomasso-Brown some 14 years ago after she bought the landmark dining car and moved it to Pawtucket from its original location in Providence. From the mid-1930s, the classic dining car was located on a parcel off Promenade Street near the Providence Place Mall, but it was forced to relocate in 2001 after the land beneath it was sold to develop apartments.

Despite its current condition, wrapped in a tarp for years, the Silver Top has a storied past. Manufactured by the New Jersey- based Kullman Dining Car Company, the historic dining car operated in Providence for 60 years and was a mainstay for hungry workers from the factories perched alongside the Moshassuck River and, closer to the end of its life in the capital city, as a popular after-hours eatery for revelers leaving the city’s bars and nightclubs.