Downtown's Once-Promising Kinfolk Space May Be Delayed Into Eternity

Well, it looks like that whole 10,000 square foot awesome party space / bike shop / boutique / late night bar going into the bottom of the Eastern Columbia building might be dead on arrival. Or, pre-arrival, as the place hasn’t even opened its doors yet after two years of anticipation.

Originally touted as the West Coast landing of popular New York-based lifestyle brand Kinfolk (no association with the luxury-casual magazine of the same title), the downtown project first came to light back in 2013, when the real estate world maybe hadn’t quite lost its mind over every inch of downtown just yet. Fast forward to 2014, and the Kinfolk team reached out to sister site Racked to bemoan construction delays that forced their opening into the new year.

Now here it is, springtime in the city, and there are no signs of life behind those papered up windows. There’s no movement on a pending ABC license for the location either, and it seems that Kinfolk’s previous early-2015 assertion has been well off.

In their latest, Racked all but lays quarters on the closed eyelids of the seemingly deceased project, quoting Kinfolk’s communications head as saying there is "no expected completion date," with an added caveat that an opening this year is "very unlikely." Maybe those rising rents have finally caught up with Kinfolk after all.