Beijing’s citywide ‘renovations’ continue to shutter businesses, and the latest victim is popular California-style restaurant Napa.
The restaurant, just south of Chaoyang Park, received official notice last week that they were being forced to close. The shop’s last operating day will be September 15. Napa plans to open a new location in Shunyi later this fall.
“We thought we had more time,” says chef Colin Smith. When Napa opened in in 2016, he and his team were alerted that the city had plans to renovate the area – but were told it wouldn’t happen for several years. But then the rumored date of construction kept moving earlier.
“Predictions on redevelopment went from two years, to one, to six months, to our official notice… all in the span of two weeks,” he tells That’s Beijing.
This isn’t the restaurant’s first dance with Beijing’s ever-changing building laws. Their first location was shut down in 2015 (the Chaoyang Park one is their second). And last fall, Napa debuted an expansive roof, with several beers on tap and a massive oven for wood-fired pizzas, but the authorities shut down the oven a few months after. As a final hoorah, Napa will get the fire going one last time this weekend, and wood-fired pizzas will be available during dinner service tonight, September 9 and tomorrow, September 10.
The citywide renovations, sometimes referred to as Beijing's "beautification campaign," have been closing shops and bricking over doors at an unprecedented pace since this spring. Napa is just one of many businesses that has been affected.
For more information about Beijing's citywide renovations, see our detailed report here.
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