BUTTE – No one offered the minimum bid on Butte’s historic M&M Bar and Cafe at a sheriff’s auction, meaning the property goes to a Bozeman man with a lien on the business.
Bidding on the land and building, along with its contents, began Tuesday morning at nearly $361,000.
District Judge Kurt Krueger ordered the property sold after ruling in March that Dan Klemann had defaulted on a $350,000 loan from Carl Vander Molen. Vander Molen’s attorney, Rick Orizotti of Butte, said his client wants to sell the business to someone who will reopen it as a bar and diner.
“We would like to do it as quickly as possible,” Orizotti said. “Carl recognizes the iconic nature of the M&M and the importance of the business to Uptown and the people of Butte.”
The M&M opened as the Martin & Mosby Saloon in 1890 and stayed open around the clock to serve miners as they came off their shifts. The M&M was open continuously for 113 years and became the city’s unofficial St. Patrick’s Day headquarters before closing in April 2003. It reopened in March 2005 after some remodeling and updating, and was sold to Klemann in March 2008. Klemann closed the bar last September.
The liquor license was not part of Tuesday’s auction.