COFFEE BEANS & BEINGS / COOL ADAPTIVE REUSE LOCATIONS

LIGHTS, COFFEE, ACTION--When gutsy entrepreneurs saved the North Park Theatre (1928 vaudeville venue) they put a coffee house in as part of a successful tenant mix.

Part of the charm of going out for coffee in the morning is to walk into a coffee house that was once one of San Diego’s leading vaudeville stages.

The Starbucks site is part of the economic engine that helps the Historic North Park Theatre offer some of the top contemporary music acts anywhere.  If helping a historic site stay in one piece and even thrive means having a coffee house as part of its tenant mix then that’s very cool.  Here are a few creative adaptive reuse coffee house locations.

BRICK YARN--Pegasus Coffee House has been a Bainbridge Island, WA fixture for almost 30 years. The building was formerly home to Anderson Hardware store and its trademark bricks were salvaged from the Port Blakely Mill incinerator. 

BEAN COUNTERS—Nice work here.  Starbucks made this great looking venue from a vault the historic Amsterdamsche Bank, a landmark building on Amsterdam’s famous Rembrandt Square and is the largest Starbucks in Europe coming in at 430 sq. meters. The Bank was designed by Liz Muller, Starbucks Concept Director, who brought on 35 local artists and craftspeople to transform the historic space into the new hip coffee shop. Using local people and local materials, the crew paid homage to Dutch trade and local history.

 ECO & ESPRESSO--Quartyard is an Urban Park constructed from repurposed shipping containers in the East Village Neighborhood of Downtown San Diego. What was once a 25,000 square foot vacant lot is now an eco-friendly outdoor community space, home to a coffee shop, restaurant, dog park, beer garden, music venue and a rotating assortment of food trucks. Open 7 days a week, Quartyard plays host to a number of cultural events from farmers markets to film festivals and outdoor concerts.

PENN PAL--Congrats to those who put a coffee house inside the lobby of the historic Omni William Penn hotel in Pittsburgh

WIRED ALONG THE WAY--A young couple moved to Tucumcari and turned a downbeat old motel into a stylish midcentury inn. At one end of the block long minimalist motel they made one of the units into the “Circa Espresso Bar that serves a four shot concoction called the Atomic Espresso.