Second Chance Saloon Goes Public Hoping To Get A Lease Extension And Survive The Winter

Sometimes, people think that restaurants are something more than a business.

The Second Chance Saloon has taken on its landlord, and a bunch of local folks are trying to argue for the Columbia restaurant to get a lease extension and survive the winter.

Second Chance is a casual restaurant and bar in the Oakland Mills village center.  I talked up the Old Bay wings a few years ago.  Their lease expires soon, and a bunch of folks went public last week lobbying the landlord Cedar Realty Trust to give them an extension.

Basically, that's a mix of Facebook, blogging and random chatter.  Second Chance put most of its information on its Facebook page.  Folks started on-line petitions.  The Marshmallow Man posteed on The 53d.  Bill Gray posted a call to action, asking people to write the Cedar Realty chief operating officer.  He says that Calvin Ball and Ken Ulman both wrote the landlord as well.

No one is concentrating on the food.  No one is claiming that Columbia will lack for places to get a beer.  They're saying Second Chance is a special place in their part of Columbia -- a place open to little meetings, open after football games, open for something more than selling food in a neighborhood that needs a place to meet and hang out.  As often, Julia McCready sparked the interest and captured the idea best on Village Green/Town Squared:

What do we stand for in Columbia, in 2013? Is there still room for the mom and pop privately owned business? We sigh and shrug when Don Pablo's goes, or Chicken Out, but what about the life and times of a local homegrown business whose only desire is to make good in Oakland Mills? Does our future hold nothing but chain restaurants whose coming and goings are dictated purely by numbers?

If you're interested in Second Chance, check out Julia's post and the links there.  And go eat at Second Chance.