Local music lovers and barflys alike will be sad to hear that, as of Saturday, Jan. 31, the District Tavern will be closed for business—at least as its known now.

The District’s owner Noel Chester says the battle to keep her bar open in its current location actually began three and a half years ago when her landlord—downtown developer Scott Stiteler—sent Chester a memo saying her property had doubled in value.

Since then, according to Chester, the two have been going back and forth on numbers—raising her rent price from around $15 per square foot to $30 per square foot.

“He told me that if I couldn’t talk to him about that number, then we didn’t have anything to talk about,” Chester says.

Despite trying to negotiate, Chester says Stiteler informed her the 30-day negotiation period for her lease was up and she’d have to leave. After her attorney’s proposal that she stay in her current location on a month-to-month basis until Stiteler found a new tenant was denied on Dec. 17, Chester assumed the District was doomed to shutter.

“As far as I was concerned, it was finished,” she says.

However, this is, according to her, where things start to get pretty messy between them. On Christmas Eve, Chester says she received an email on behalf of Stiteler with a new deal. According to her, he would allow her to stay in her current location until March 23. However, under this agreement, she says he demanded that she leave her bartop in the building after she vacated, sign over the District’s business name and branding to Stiteler, and agree to a gag order so she would not speak to the press about the agreement.

“At best, I thought it was unethical to send that on Christmas Eve,” she says. “At worst, it was unspeakable.”

UPDATE: Upon reading the email mentioned, it was actually sent on Dec. 22. It also required a disparagement clause, not a gag order as previously reported— the key difference between the two being that a disparagement clause is a contract-specific term that prohibits speaking publicly in a negative manner.

Chester says she feels that Stiteler’s plan was to keep the District running—just without her.

“What they really want is my name, my bar top, and— I don’t know, come to your own conclusions, but it seems they want my business without me here,” she says. “I can’t say for sure, but I do know how it makes me feel.”

After that, Chester overheard that an employee at Good Oak Bar was saying that Stiteler would hire her to take Chester’s place as future manager of the District. Chester says she then went into Good Oak and approached the employee.

“I told them that they will burn in hell before they get the District,” she says. “It was a metaphor not a threat … bad people go to hell.”

Despite that, Chester hasn’t had any resolution for her soon-to-close bar. She says when she opened her bar over a decade ago, Stiteler wasn’t her landlord and the entire feel of downtown was different then. As someone whose resume includes bartending at local spots like Hotel Congress since the ‘80s, she says she’s seen the city change.

“I know a little bit about downtown and what’s always been so extraordinary to me is that it’s so diverse,” Chester says. “To gentrify it and then say you’re making it better by pushing out diversity is worse than sad.”

Although Chester admits business has been slower for her in recent years, she doesn’t see the redevelopment of downtown as a main reason for that. She does, however, see the growing centralization of the city’s dining nightlife into one area as a bain for businesses on Fourth Avenue and beyond.

“There hasn’t been this population boom they thought there would be,” Chester says. “They’re draining clientele from one area to another now. What is that going to do? Who is that helping?”

After several attempts to reach Stiteler for comment, he did not return our calls. However, we hope we to talk with him in the future about his plans for The District space. As far as Chester, she says her plan now is to find a new job because she currently doesn’t have anywhere to move her bar.

Editor’s Note: This post was changed from its original format to include new information.

This article appears in Jan 1-7, 2015.

25 replies on “District Tavern to Close, Though It Isn’t Clear What Will Take the Longstanding Bar’s Place”

  1. Wasn’t this rumored a couple of weeks ago?

    And Scott Stiteler – ugh. Doing his best to ruin Downtown.

  5. Say what you want about the district but it was one of the last threads of our beloved downtown. You can keep these idiotic “posh” dining spaces, give us back our bars and bring back the grill. Next thing you know theyll be trying to phase out Shot, man screw this uppidy s**t

  6. Noel has so much s’punk!!!! Don’t let them steal your bar name/concept! So sad to say goodbye to District… Look forward to what Noel does in the future..

  7. Sigh…. This is what I come home to. This is why I didn’t want to. My friends and my favorite businesses are being raped by the redevelopment of downtown Tucson. They’re driving the true lovers of the area out.
    I understand it’s a money game, but at the same time they can make money and leave the rest of us (who’ve always been here) alone.

  9. Sadly, this is the cost of revitalization. Stiteler has every right to leverage the value of his property but his attempt to hijack the name and brand with that ridiculous offer is awful. The District was one of my favorite bars and will be missed. I’m sure students living in the nearby country clubs will love whatever $10 club drink is being served from that location.

  10. The “posh” dining spaces where you can’t hear yourself think nor hold a conversation with a companion.
    We’ve been to most of the new joints, did not have good experiences, and will return to Kingfisher, Pastiche, etc etc, where it is much more comfortable.

  11. I never knew Noel Chester or even any of the bartenders that well (I’m not a particularly outgoing regular), but for the 5 years of legal drinking age that I lived in Tucson, the District was “my” bar. The drinks were cheap and strong ($3 for a Miller High Life and a shot of Old Crow, please), the booths were cozy, the decor was haphazard, and the jukebox was the best in town. I spent many nights there with friends, and sometimes alone, talking to interesting people and feeling (so unlike how I felt in the trendy clubs nearby) as though I was in a place where I belonged.

    A dive bar is a beautiful and fragile thing. Find one you love and support it. They need you, and we need them.

  12. All the people driving down from the hills in their Subarus to dine at places like the Hub will lose interest in downtown again as soon as the next La Encantada springs up out there, then what? Driving the people who actually live in and support downtown and the businesses in the area every day is short sighted and despicable, not to mention foolish.

  13. Mindy Smith I drive a Subaru and dine at the Hub, and drink at the District Tavern (not living in the foothills though). Your generalizations and judgements may not always be right. Lots of people from all over town love coming downtown, and will not leave if it stays vibrant. The question is how to preserve a few of the old places as real estate prices rise. I agree it sucks to see nothing but semi-high end places moving in (though I think some are great).

  16. A new area for bars with “character” will spring up a little distance away.
    We will have a new place to hang comfortably.
    It will take years but it will happen!

  17. I wouldn’t use my real name either if I had just copped to driving my Subaru over to the Hub to “dine”, I guess. We can preserve those places by patronizing them instead of the crappy new places that spring up where the good ones used to be so they can afford to pay the increased rent.

  18. The gag order is particularly odious. It amounts to an attempt to fool the clientele into continuing to patronize the establishment as if nothing had changed, as if the small business owner had not been squeezed out by the Dickensian money-grubber, as if the entity she had nurtured for ten years had not been ripped from her hands by the robber baron.

    But that sort of behavior is to be expected from wealthy people who care about nothing more than becoming even wealthier, as appears to be the case with Mr. Shiteler.

  19. The lords of downtown development preach “local local local” but this just proves how much of a sham it is. Without rent controls or protections for the businesses that have made Congress Street their home for years (many years before provincial, suburban white folks deemed it ‘safe’ enough to patronize), they will all be forced out and replaced not by other local businesses, but by anyone with enough money to afford the space. This is why the “local” businesses we get downtown end up being HiFi or the Proper/Diablo/Good Oak complex–establishment capitalists from other parts of the state who have already made their nut; Arizonans, yes, but not Tucsonans–that is not local. Shiteler’s just another example of the fact that money can’t buy taste. Tucson had a great chance with downtown and they’ve whiffed completely. In one year, they’ve lost all the character it had and changed it to something completely different, something foreign. It’s gone.

  20. crappy is in the eye of the beholder, Mindy. If you have a problem with people driving to hangout downtown at places you don’t approve of, well, good luck to you. I don’t totally disagree with some of what you say about actually patronizing the old beloved places, but simply cursing the new and wishing things wouldn’t change or go back to the way the were likely might won’t work out.
    Also I love my damn subaru.

  21. Economic segregation is the defining feature of the new USA. The interesting part of this retro-experimental return to Industrial Age economics will actually happen up the street. As UofA becomes increasingly gentrified, will 4th Avenue become Townie’s Row — a bar district just for locals where students come slumming only after they get drunk downtown?

  22. Ugh…I had some memorable nights out with friends at The District and am sad to see it go. I can’t figure out who exactly these new shiny places are catering to–it certainly ain’t locals like me who can’t afford to pay $10 for a cocktail. I hardly ever go down there now because I feel so out of place. If there were still places like Yikes, Wonderland, El Retro, Frona’s (anyone remember those places?) I’d still make an effort to go, but now, forget it. Also, I find myself feeling a bit too old for 4th Ave. Oh Christ, I’ll just stay home and drink….

Comments are closed.