PORTLAND (AP) – The 56-year-old Miss Portland Diner has closed after serving its final meal, but longtime owner Randall Chasse hopes that the city will accept the building as a gift and reopen it somewhere else in the Bayside neighborhood. After running the business for 24 years, Chasse, 63, is ready to retire.

The City Council will consider his proposed donation, which includes the building but not the Marginal Way property on which it sits.

There was little time for sadness Sunday, at least not before the diner shut down. Chasse was busy cooking and customers were busy eating.

But when customers left, waitresses handed them carnations as fleeting reminders of the significance of the day.

“You know what’s amazing?” Chasse asked. “Is the amount of interest and the amount of love.”

The love comes from people like Roy Tripp and Jane Annable-Tripp, who figure they’ve been eating at the Miss Portland for 20 years.

“This is Jane,” said Mary Barnes, the diner’s manager. “Jane is going to get poached eggs.”

Actually, she would not. The diner hasn’t served poached eggs for years, but the running joke always gets a smile.

“It’s been such a nice place to come to,” Annable-Tripp said, adding that the Miss Portland served the best hash in town.

The Miss Portland Diner is the 818th creation of the Worcester Diner Co. Its exterior resembles a railroad car; the inside still has the original porcelain tiling, marble countertop and pleated steel paneling.

“There’s an awful lot of interest in moving this diner out of state,” said Chasse, who doesn’t want that to happen.

Chasse had tried to unload the diner through an essay contest, but abandoned the idea because there were not enough people willing to pony up the $100 entry fee. He later listed the diner on eBay, but that plan went nowhere.

Now, he says he trusts only the city to move the diner to another neighborhood spot where it will thrive.

AP-ES-03-15-04 0217EST