Real estate broker Beau Hatfield said the building's owner, Landry's Restaurants Inc., is attempting to sell the building in a package of five properties. However, the restaurant chain has received at least four individual offers on the 114 N. Santa Cruz Ave. property.

"If they see a price that they like, they will break it out from that package," he said.

The two offers Hatfield has personally handled are both from Bay Area restaurateurs, and he believes the others are, too. He said he did not know when or if Landry's would accept one of the offers.

Councilwoman Sandy Decker said she has heard several rumors about future use of the building, including one that proposed a bed and breakfast establishment.

Decker said that, because of its history and location, the old mansion would be a prime location for any such business.

"It is, downtown, probably one of our most valuable historic buildings," she said. "Where it's situated, it's very valuable to us."

Indeed, the house has logistic and historic value. There is ample parking at the site, and it is the only remaining mansion of many that used to line N. Santa Cruz Avenue between Saratoga­Los Gatos Road and Main Street.

The house was built in 1891 for Mary G. Coggeshall, a wealthy Australian widow. When she died a little more than 25 years later, the house was converted into the Place Funeral Home, which it remained until the Chart House opened in 1976.

A Landry's vice president said in January that the Los Gatos Chart House was "not a successful restaurant." Hatfield said the restaurant's former employees told him that a lack of stability likely caused its demise.

"It was a springboard for a lot of their management," he said. "They were constantly cycling through one-year managers."

He also said menu changes and fluctuation may have upset customers who could no longer order their favorite dishes.

Los Gatos town staff recently asked Landry's to keep the site maintained after noticing that the lawn and garden in front of the 113-year-old building were overgrowing and drying out and that newspapers were piling up on the front porch.

Shirley Henderson, a member of the Los Gatos Beautification Committee, said she and other committee members would water the site if nobody else was going to.

"I don't want it to go and die on us," she said.

Roy Alba, the town's code compliance officer, said that the site was "very far" from getting to the point of a code violation, but the owners were asked to keep the property cleaned up.

According to Hatfield, Landry's has assigned a gardener to perform weekly maintenance, which began May 15.

Now if they could just get someone to clean up all that creepy tableware.