Photo: Photos By Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

It took Jennifer Colliau two years to open Here’s How, her cocktail bar and restaurant in uptown Oakland. Now, three months after opening, Colliau says the business is in jeopardy, as she’s locked in a protracted battle with neighbors who oppose it.

Seven tenants of the building’s residential units filed protests against Colliau’s liquor license application in October, citing among their concerns noise disturbances, loitering and smoking outside the premises. They say that Here’s How, at 1780 Telegraph Ave., will create a public nuisance, and that the neighborhood has too many liquor licenses already. The protesters testified about their concerns last month before an administrative judge in Oakland.

Colliau, meanwhile, maintains that she’s a responsible business person who is committed to making Here’s How a positive addition to the community.

“I grew up in Oakland,” says Colliau, who has been running the bar under an interim operating permit since April. “I’m ethical, I’m kind, I’m committed to diversity.”

“It’s just NIMBY,” she says: the “not in my backyard” mentality.

Protesters take a different view.

“There are already too many bars in this area (over 10), and we don’t need another one. This place should have limited hours, until 10 p.m. every night including weekends,” resident Ajay Anand wrote in his submission to the state’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

Here’s How is currently open from 4 p.m. to midnight Sunday through Thursday, and until 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday.

The administrative judge has 30 days to issue a proposed decision, which the ABC can either adopt or reject. That final ruling can be appealed, and there is a possibility that the case could go before a District Court judge, but ABC information officer John Carr says that is relatively rare.

While the ABC’s granting of an interim operating permit “doesn’t guarantee that there would be a permanent license, it says the ABC has reviewed the license and thinks it’s good enough to issue a temporary license,” says Carr.

But the interim permit presents one major difficulty for Colliau: Liquor distributors require payments of cash on demand from bars with the temporary licenses, as opposed to the standard 30-day due date.

“When you have a normal liquor license, you get to sell the alcohol before you have to pay for it,” Colliau explains. “Now, I don’t have that operating capital. It’s money I’m going to make, but I don’t have it in the bank.”

For that reason, she has been late to pay a number of invoices.

Colliau signed the lease for the space in spring 2017. She opened Here’s How in spring 2019. She estimates that the delayed opening cost her $150,000, between her rent payments prior to opening and the extra architecture and construction fees required by her negotiations with the building’s homeowners association.

Cash flow is tight.

“I have to fight for my bar just to make it survive at this point,” she says. The business is funded by investors.

The space at 1780 Telegraph Ave. is zoned for a Type 47 license, which permits a “bona fide eating place,” typically a restaurant that also serves wine, beer and spirits. Although Colliau — the longtime beverage director at the San Francisco bar the Interval — has made cocktails the main focus of Here’s How, she also serves a full food menu, with dishes like a fried chicken sandwich, ceviche and Kobe beef bavette. She says she is complying with all of the requirements of a Type 47 license.

Several of the protesters cited an ABC rule that allows protests of liquor licenses on the grounds that liquor sales “would interfere with the quiet enjoyment of their property by the residents of the area.”

“I live directly above the proposed establishment and believe that its operation until 2 a.m. every night will seriously interfere with the quiet enjoyment of my home,” wrote Phoebe Schenker, president of the building’s homeowners association, in her protest of the license application. She did not respond to a request for further comment.

Here’s How is located in a bustling commercial corridor, directly across the street from the Fox Theater and within a block of bars including the Emporium, the Punchdown, the Miranda, Diving Dog, Woods Bar & Brewery, Somar, Flora and Make Westing. One neighbor, Richard Wenzel, wrote to the court that “none of these businesses were in place when I purchased and moved here in 2011 and had they been I would have given it a second and third thought in particular to moving into a building that has a bar on the street level right underneath my residence.”

Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

Curiously, there had been plans in place for a bar before Here’s How came along. An art gallery was the last business open in the space, but it sat empty for years. The previous building owner had secured a tenant who planned to open a sports bar, which Colliau says the homeowners’ association approved in 2013. The sports bar never opened, and the owner sold the building.

Colliau is confident that she will win this battle, but she fears that her business may not be able to weather the prolonged process. Even if she is eventually granted her permanent liquor license, it could be held up in an appeals process for another year, and the requirement to pay cash on demand for all her supplies could deplete her funds in the meantime.

She would never have signed on to open Here’s How if she’d known what she was getting into, she said: The ordeal has been a “nightmare.”

Esther Mobley is The San Francisco Chronicle’s wine critic. Email: emobley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Esther_mobley Instagram: @esthermob