No, the Elephant Bar is not triumphantly returning to 521 Firestone Road, nor are its successor restaurants High Sierra and Flightline. On September 12th I stopped by to see if there was any activity at the property that has the unusual status of having the City of Santa Barbara as the landlord. The only thing I saw hard at work was entropy, meaning the weeds are taller than my last visit and general deterioration continues throughout the property. The inside looks unchanged from closing day in 2019.
Such a great decision by the city. Just imagine how much revenue they’ve lost due their decisions to force first the e-bar then the other restaurants to leave.
The whole Elephant Bar chain closed and High Sierra/Flightline were dead on arrival.
Not much hope for that location I think.
Whatever the opposite of midas touch is, he’s got it. Uptown Brewery, the sizzler spot, this, just terrible…
It’s a weird location to support a restaurant that size, tear it down and build a modern updated building that will accommodate two or more tenants, or at least gut it and shell it out in a way that multiple tenants could occupy that location. This strategy of let it sit and rot away until someone wants to pay us a stupid amount of rent and operating expenses clearly isn’t working.