When Swati Bose and Kabir Amir opened Flight Wine Bar in Chinatown nearly 10 years ago, they hoped the area would turn into a connected neighborhood like Shaw, somewhere people would live and go out to eat, shop and seek out entertainment.
Though the couple never saw that image fully take shape, Flight did well for most of its life, maintaining a good enough crowd of regulars to make the rent. But business slowed during the pandemic, and it never recovered, Bose told Bisnow. And now, the bar near the corner of Sixth and H streets NW is preparing to close next month.
Chinatown’s Flight Wine Bar plans to shutter in December, just a few months before what would have been its 10th anniversary.
“Chinatown has, I think, been in crisis mode,” Bose said. “And we hate to leave it. We don’t want to be one of those businesses that leave a neighborhood because it gets tough, and then we’re also adding to the problem. But we just couldn’t foresee how we can sustain.”
The Chinatown/Gallery Place area is suffering from a confluence of factors — many exacerbated by the pandemic — making the neighborhood an increasing challenge for the city. Like the rest of downtown, office vacancy is a major hurdle, while some of the neighborhood’s most prominent retail establishments have shuttered. A new entrant to the neighborhood that filled the vacant Circa space when it opened in December, Tom’s Watch Bar, in September was reported to be closing after less than a year.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Emily Wishingrad over at Bisnow
