SF Chinatown's historic Red's Place bar to close due to $500K upgrade cost – SFGATE

The owner of Chinatown fixture Red’s Place plans to close the historic bar later this year following an estimated $500,000 worth of building upgrades needed to continue operating. Owner Jerry Chan announced last week that he planned to permanently close the decades-old bar on Saturday, but on Wednesday, he confirmed to SFGATE that he hopes to delay the closure until December to keep his staff employed. He said he would post an official closure announcement on Red’s social media pages at a later date. “Just seeing it coming to an end makes it very difficult,” Chan said. “It’s a tough pill to swallow, but I pretty much made amends a long time ago that this was going to happen.” Chan made the difficult decision to close Red’s Place after receiving a letter from his commercial insurance earlier this month,informing him that the building needed plumbing and electrical upgrades, he said.

Chan does not own the building, and he was previously told by the property owner that the building also needed to become ADA compliant. Chan said that would require building a wider entrance and an ADA-compliant bathroom that would have eliminated half the space inside the small bar. He estimated that the entire list of required work, which includes basement upgrades, would have set him back $500,000. “I’m gutted to