Mission District Venue Elbo Room To Be Demolished for Condos
After months of speculation and hand wringing in the music scene, the owners of the two-story building on Valencia Street housing bar and music venue the Elbo Room confirmed plans to demolish the property for condominiums.
During a recent community meeting, Dennis Ring and Susan Rokisky-Ring explained that they want to build condos with an elevator so they can live in the building as they age. The couple has lived in the Mission for more than 40 years and their current house only a few blocks away from the Mission district venue has too many stairs with no elevator, they said.
After demolition, architects will construct a five-story, nine-unit building with a roof deck on top and room for commercial space on the ground floor. The Rings promised to help relocate the Elbo Room elsewhere in the Mission, but skeptics remain. No immediate groundbreaking is expected until 2015, when the Elbo Room’s property lease runs out.
Previous parties held at the Elbo Room include the long-standing Dub Mission reggae party every Sunday and dance-fusion collective Afrolicious, who held their final weekly funk party in June of this year following a seven-year run.
Ring and Rokisky-Ring founded the Elbo Room 1991 and sold the bar business in 2010, but still own the building. The bar originally opened in 1935 after Prohibition and has been a place of entertainment since 1940.
Scenes from the Elbo Room from the SF Station archives:
Rikki Streicher founded the Elbo Room in 1991, after she closed her bar Amelia’s in the same location, and hired Dennis to manage it. Susan had NOTHING to do with the beautiful thing that was the Elbo Room, except being married to Dennis. Do your research. Dennis bought the club in…1999? The building a few years later. I spent some good years bar tending at the Elbo Room…this breaks my heart. The whole thing sucks. Money and greed have devastated my hometown.
They sold the business but kept the building, now they want to build apartments? How do the owners of the bar feel about this???
Really sad!!!! Moving to elsewhere won’t be the same…. Unfortunately, this is how the Mission District is going to be… I won’t be surprise is the fire on on mission between 21st and 22nd where the asianbstore got burned those people are going to,make some type a condoms….those are things that make you go :-/… Buying people of their renting buildings to make a profit or just to change things because you tjink your things are better that is. Ake it right!!!!!!!!!!!
SF is losing its heart & soul to developers & sad for me to admit losing its appeal after living here 15 years.
What a load of bullshit to justify just being another speculator cashing in on the boom. And I’d like to add the rich HISTORY?HERSTORY of this place…It was a really great latina lesbian bar for years…..
Very conveniently, 9 units, meaning none of them have to be BMR (below market rate).
http://www.trulia.com/profile/susan-ring-agent-san-francisco-ca-186193/overview Susan is a realtor who just wants to get rich, sad so sad
Could we make it a Historic Landmark?
So many memories at that place!