(CNN) -- On a warm evening in Istanbul, a bar called Kooperatif announced its last call. Friends old and new gathered in the art and performance hall, located in the heart of the city's Beyoglu district, for a smoke-filled goodbye accompanied by live music and doses of nostalgia. Kooperatif closed its doors in Rumeli Han, a venerable 19th-century Ottoman shopping arcade that until recently housed an eclectic mix of tenants, including an Indian cultural center, a rock-climbing wall and the district headquarters of the Turkish Communist Party. Safak Velioglu, founder and owner of Kooperatif, called Rumeli Han a "small republic."
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Istanbul's crumbling Beyoglu district has been home to the city's artists but rising rents are pushing some out
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Kooperatif, an art and performance hall in the heart of Beyoglu, recently closed shop
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Istanbul has been awash with development projects over the past decade
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Changes are being driven driven by Turkish economic growth
To get to @placeholder, visitors had to dip down a narrow staircase on a Beyoglu side street and stumble into an old brick basement painted white with remnants of past art installations plastered along the walls.
Kooperatif owner @placeholder plans to reopen his bar in a new location, but he's unlikely to find a location as historic and quixotic as the old Rumeli Han, and concedes this might be a problem.