am i owed money

Was the bar owned by an independent legal entity, like a corporation or llp?  If so, is the new bar owned by the same entity or a different one? The name of the bar is irrelevant; businesses change their names every day.  The ownership of the two bars, and the person or entity to whom you loaned the money, is critical.  If you loan money to a business owned by an individual, rather than to a busines owned by an entity (for example, Joes Bar can be owned by Joe Smith, or by Joe Smith Corp., which is a corporation wholly owned by Joe Smith), the individual owes you the money, and, assuming that repayment was not conditioned on the success of the business, still owes you the money, regardless of whether the business failed or whether he's operating another business now.  If, however, you loaned money to an entity which owned the bar (e.g. Joe  Smith Corp., or Joe's Bar LLC), only that entity, in most cases, owes you money, and if that entity goes out of business and has no assets, you're out of luck, even if the owner of the entity opens another business.  If, however, the entity owning the original bar opens another bar, even if it has a different name, it still owes you the money.