Belfast man on a mission to find $3.5m as landlord calls last orders on his Seattle pub

Bar boss launches Gofundme page in bid to drum up interest from potential investors

A BELFAST man raising money to save the Seattle Irish pub he has been running for nearly 10 years has described it as being like “people’s living rooms”.

Eamonn Davey, who has lived in the US for 14 years, is facing up to the prospect of closing Murphy’s, in the Wallingford district of the city, after the landlord put the land on the market.

He has offered to sell the site to Eamonn and his business partner, Chelley Bassett, for $3.5m.

The pair have launched a Gofundme page to raise a deposit as a way of getting potential investors interested and have raised more than $28,391 so far. If no buyer is found, the money will be returned.

Eamonn said: “We started the Gofundme as an awareness campaign as we know it would be very hard to raise $3.5m.

“Or ideal situation would be for someone like an investor to come in and buy the property, and then the money that we raise would be a downpayment for them.

“Obviously that’s something that’s going to take time.

“[The landlord] has said he’s going to sell half a block but would sell our corner of Murphy’s for $3.5m.”

Seattle is familiar to many as setting of the sitcom Frasier.

Eamonn said the pub was a fixture on the city’s social scene and had a friendly atmosphere.

“It’s not too far off Cheers. We have a lot of regulars come in who live in the neighbourhood,” he continued.

“It’s also very family-orientated. We have kids coming in with their mums and dads.

“There’s nothing else really like it in the neighbourhood where parents can come in and sit and have dinner for a couple of hours and relax.

“Sometimes you get a group of kids running round the place. It’s more like people’s living rooms.

“They come in and just feel so relaxed that they don’t want to leave sometimes, which can be a good thing and a bad thing.”

The business opened as Murphy’s in a location close to its present site in 1981.

Eamonn said its second owner turned the venue into a sports bar, but that he and his business partner had worked to win back its traditional customer base.

“We had to start from the beginning again as nobody was really going to it as the atmosphere just wasn’t there,” he added.

It has moved beyond the Irish pub template with a big food offering, running taco nights and burger nights, as well as playing traditional music.

“There’s a lot of schools where we are, so there’s a lot of families as well and a lot of small businesses,” Eamonn said.

“It has a lot of old buildings but it is one of those neighbourhoods that is being redeveloped a lot.

“The old buildings are being torn down and condos are being built instead, which is what might happen with Murphy’s.”

Eamonn, from the Ravenhill Road, is married to Livia, with whom he has Ruby (8) and sixyear-old Saoirse. He moved to the US after struggling to find work as a security engineer at home.

He said: “I came over for three months, and here I am, 14 years later.”