San Francisco is dishing out millions of dollars to small businesses in a new attempt to fill vacant storefronts and keep beleaguered neighborhoods lively, but one grantee is already calling it quits less than three months after it got a six-figure paycheck.
Chicken Fried Palace owner Seth Stowaway announced this week that his Mission District restaurant is now closed, citing sidewalk problems and a health scare as reasons for the closure. Stowaway had received $100,000 from the city in the spring as part of the city’s new Storefront Opportunity Grant program.
The new grant program is part of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s “efforts to drive San Francisco’s comeback” by reducing vacant storefronts in neighborhoods, according to a February news release. The city has so far given over $3 million in grants through the program to 39 different businesses, including Bayview Oyster Bar and Tender Heart Thrift in the Tenderloin. Chicken Fried Palace appears on a list of grantees for the program but is not included in a news release posted on June 23…