GREENFIELD — Just days before Main Street Bar & Grille was expected to change ownership, the purchasing party, Greenfield resident Ivan Tristan, canceled the sale.

In an interview Monday evening, Main Street Bar & Grille co-owner Christina Guevin-Gurney, who has owned the 94 Main St. business with her husband Tom Gurney for more than 16 years, said they received a written notice Sunday canceling the sale. The restaurant was set to reopen under Tristan’s ownership on Wednesday, July 23.

“We’ve been working on this since mid-March, since he has shown interest. We were under a contractual agreement with [Tristan] to give him the time to get approved and be vetted through the city and through the state. He received final approval and financing in July, and we set the date for July 21 for the closure,” Guevin-Gurney said. The Board of License Commissioners had voted unanimously last week to approve the business’ entertainment and establishment licenses. “We received the written notification from our real estate agent that they received from his team. ... He received it on Sunday and our real estate agent sent it right to me.”

In an interview Tuesday afternoon, Tristan said he has nothing but respect for the business owners, noting that they built and grew the restaurant “from scratch.” However, he said he was feeling overwhelmed by its size and pulled out of the deal because he did not believe he could run the restaurant by himself.

“I didn’t realize how big it was until I went in, and it was just overwhelming. I don’t think I could have done it myself, but it’s a great business,” Tristan said. “It’s a wonderful business and nothing happened with [the owners]. They were really helpful and awesome the whole time. It just was too big for me and I didn’t realize it.”

Tristan, who had planned to buy the business for $175,000, used to own the Easy Street Nightclub on Fiske Avenue prior to its closure in 2011. He previously said he has worked in the food and beverage service industry for roughly three decades and, as a Greenfield local, he was interested in owning a piece of the city’s main commercial strip.

Upon receiving the notice of the cancellation Sunday, Guevin-Gurney said she and her husband worked against the clock to call their employees and vendors to notify them of the terminated sale and to gear up to reopen the business on Wednesday as usual.

Despite the stress and disappointment brought about by a last-minute cancellation, Guevin-Gurney said she and her husband will continue to operate the business the way they always have and will continue their efforts to sell it.

“[Tristan] had the right to change his mind. It’s just unfortunate that it happened so late in the process, when everything had already been set,” Guevin-Gurney said. “We spent our whole day trying to stop a train that’s going at full speed because we had already notified all our vendors and all of our parties that are involved with us that we were signing the business over.”

Guevin-Gurney said she is “disappointed,” but that she wishes Tristan “all the best.”

“Failure is not an option for us. It never has been. That’s what we live by and that’s how we survived all these years, and we’re just going to continue to do what we do — business as usual and the business is still up for sale,” Guevin-Gurney said. “We’ve waited a long time for the right buyer. We thought we had the right buyer and he changed his mind.”

Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at acammalleri@recorder.com or 413-930-4429.