Brass Elephant owners avoid foreclosure with payment 

Posted: 7:09 pm Tue, August 3, 2010
By Rachel Pryzgoda
Daily Record Business Writer

The owners of the Brass Elephant averted Tuesday’s planned foreclosure auction by paying PNC Bank an undisclosed amount of money.

“We met some of the needs of the bank,” said Jack Elsby, one of the owners of the former landmark restaurant in Mount Vernon.

Elsby declined to say how much was paid to PNC, which had forced the foreclosure and the auction.

Attorney Sidney Friedman, who represents PNC, said discussions last week culminated in an agreement on Friday, but the restaurant’s owners had been “saying all along” they would pay. Friedman, of Baltimore-based Weinstock, Friedman & Friedman PA, would not disclose settlement terms.

The Brass Elephant, located in a four-story brick townhouse that was built in 1870, closed last August, a victim of the recession.

The restaurant, including the building, furniture and other fixtures, was originally listed in September for sale at $1.8 million. By January, the asking price had dropped to $1.3 million. In late March, the owners announced they had a contract of sale, but that transaction fell through.

In mid-May, the asking price of the property — the restaurant now without accoutrements — was reduced to $995,900.

Randy Stahl, another of the Brass Elephant’s owners, said he did not know how much the property would now be listed at.

A spokesman for Alex Cooper Auctioneers, which was selling the 924 N. Charles St. property, said he received news of the cancellation Monday. A buyer would have been required to put down a $35,000 deposit on the property.