After a decade on Second Street and faced with an expiring lease, the Financial District drinking establishment DaDa Bar is hoping to hop just across Market Street to a long-vacant retail space on the ground floor of the Mechanics’ Institute building on Post Street.

It would seem to be a natural fit: an art-themed bar and gallery taking up residence in a cultural landmark that is home to a community of writers, scholars and chess players. The move would only be two-tenths of a mile.

But for some condo owners at the Ritz-Carlton Club & Residences located around the corner at 695 Market St., that is too close for comfort.

In a micro land-use skirmish, about 35 Ritz-Carlton residents are fighting the liquor license transfer that would allow the DaDa Bar to move from 82 Second St., which new owners are converting into a restaurant, to 65 Post St., a 4,300-square-foot space that has been vacant for more than three years.

The previously quiet disagreement burst into public view last week at a meeting of the Board of Supervisors’ Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee, which must sign off on liquor license transfers.

The three-member committee voted unanimously to support the license transfer. It next goes to the full Board of Supervisors. If the board grants the transfer, the Ritz residents may appeal to the state Alcoholic Beverage Control board.

Quality-of-life concerns

At last week’s meeting, opponents said the bar, located adjacent to the entrance to the Ritz’s parking garage, would generate unwanted noise and create a safety threat to residents driving in and out of the underground parking structure.

Lead opponent Leanne Williams, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, said her unit on the 19th floor of the Ritz would be in “direct sight and sound” of the new DaDa location, which is causing “deep concern and distress” among residents. Attorney Jerry Jolly, former director of the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, is representing the residents.

“These are concerned citizens. They are worried about our quality of life,” Jolly said.

Art, not alcohol

Jolly said the residents are asking the DaDa Bar to have a security guard to monitor the sidewalk. “We are open for compromise,” he said.

But more than a dozen supporters of the DaDa Bar and the Mechanics’ Institute who showed up at the hearing said the requests were unreasonable and the fears misplaced. They stressed that the DaDa plays a role in the city’s arts scene, hosting about 10 arts shows a year, and raises money for arts organizations.

“This city is about diversity,” said Emma Peel, who introduced herself as resigning empress of the Imperial Court of San Francisco, an LGBT charity organization. “The culture of DaDa Bar is about art and expressing yourself. It’s not about drunkenness or being unruly.”

And not all Ritz residents have a problem with the bar. Matthew Scanlan, a Ritz resident who is president of the Mechanics’ Institute’s board of trustees, said the doubled-pane windows at the Ritz make it unlikely that noise from the bar would disturb building residents. He pointed out that several other bars and restaurants are as close or closer than the proposed DaDa location.

‘Biased campaign’

Scanlan suggested the opposition stemmed from the DaDa being a “culturally and ethnically diverse” establishment and said that as a building resident he rejects what he called a “frivolous, arbitrary and biased campaign.”

“I am ashamed this is emanating from a place my family calls home,” he said.

Scanlan’s position is supported by Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who during his previous stint on the Board of Supervisors helped the condo tower get built. In 2004, when developers proposed converting the old Chronicle building at 695 Market St. into Ritz-Carlton-branded condos and time-shares, Peskin helped shepherd the project through the planning process. He supported its change of use from office to residential and sponsored legislation that made the building eligible for historic tax credits.

Now, a dozen years later, Peskin said the Ritz owners have “had their day in court. The board committee correctly found that their concerns were not valid. The DaDa Bar has actually been in their neighborhood for 10 years. It’s right around the corner. I hope that the Ritz residents will take the time to become patrons at the DaDa Bar.”

A lot at stake

Ritz condo owner Norman Chung said that the many elderly people in the building have a lot at stake in continuing to oppose the liquor license transfer.

“Any stranger at the bar could walk into the garage, and there would be no one there to protect us,” he said.

For the Mechanics’ Institute, the DaDa Bar lease is economically vital. The nonprofit library and chess room that has been in the Post Street building since 1910 has more than 4,000 members, but their $95-a-year membership fee covers only 7 to 9 percent of expenses. The rest of the organization’s budget comes from its endowment, fundraising and rents from the building, which is leased out to between 40 and 50 small tenants, a mix of writers, nonprofits and professionals.

Scanlan said his immediate concern is making sure DaDa Bar employees have a new venue to go to when their lease expires in October.

“What they are proposing is a perfectly legitimate business in a properly zoned location,” he said. “There shouldn’t be this kind of protest.”

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen