Downtown bar Peerless at 919 E. Douglas closed once before — back in 2019 when the founder got into a rent dispute with the landlord.
It reopened about seven months later when Marcello Venegas bought it and had continued operating until a little more than a month ago.
Now, Peerless is gone for good. Venegas said that his lease was up and that he decided not to renew it. He’s spent most of this week moving out the equipment he wasn’t able to sell.
That means that Venegas, who also owned nearby restaurant Forge ICT until it closed last June when he got behind in rent, is out of the food-and-drink business. He left a job in engineering at a local aircraft plant and is trying to get back into that field, he said…