Brookland bar and restaurant Steel Plate is closing its doors at the end of this weekend.

The five-year-old neighborhood spot made the announcement on Facebook on Thursday afternoon, calling it “a bittersweet decision, one that involved many different motivations: families, babies, new ventures, and the like.”

Owner Diton Pashaj tells DCist that “we wanted to build a place that would be somewhere we would want to hang out,” and he feels like he achieved that. He says he would see a dozen people walk into the bar alone, each knowing they’d run into people they had met at Steel Plate when they arrived at the spot, which nestled on a bustling block of 12th Street NE.

Pashaj, who previously owned the now-shuttered Rustik Tavern in Bloomingdale, says he’d been considering closing Steel Plate for about a month, though there wasn’t one deciding factor. He declined to comment on what kind of new ventures were in store. Per the Facebook post, Pashaj is “working diligently to find the right operator to take over the space.” He declined to provide details about the status of the lease.

DJ Pittman will grace the bar once more on Friday evening and “on Sunday we will attempt to drink the bar dry,” per the Facebook notice.

“It’s been an amazing run and we’ve had a fantastic time,” says Pashaj. “We’ve met some amazing, amazing people, and we will miss every single one of them.”