You need to take this with a grain of salt and not go screaming about it on Facebook like it's a done deal, but the people who own the property that the Elbo Room lives on are quietly talking about maybe developing it as condos at some point.
Socketsite broke the news, via some documents filed with the Planning Commission, showing that the owners are looking to develop a 9-unit condo building with ground-floor commercial space at 645-647 Valencia Street, a.k.a. where the Elbo Room now sits. The bar would of course have to be demolished, but a project like this takes an extra-long time to weave its way through the city's bureaucracy, and Socketsite notes the added complication that some people are already suggesting that the bar might be a candidate for historic preservation it was once the home of longtime lesbian spot Amelia's in the late 70s and 80s, under late Elbo Room owner Rikki Streicher, and became the Elbo Room in the 1990s.
The current owner of the Elbo Room, Matt Shapiro, has had to field a lot of calls about this and has posted to Facebook insisting, "No, Elbo Room is not closing any time soon." He added, " We Are Not Closing, if we were, I’d be freaking out .the building owners (close friends of ours), submitted a proposal (which has to be public), but are not acting on it at this time."
It's of course an inevitability for a lot of equally desirable, developable sites on the Valencia corridor, of which there are only a few left. But, for now, you can save your freakouts and keep going to Elbo Room. But you've been warned.
