If you thought Dupont Circle might lose one of its 50 Starbucks locations, you were wrong. If you thought Starbucks will not remain a building block in every neighborhood next to the FedEx/Kinko’s and CVS, you were wrong.

Of the 600 stores that will serve its last Strawberries & Creme Frappuccino, only one Starbucks will lose its District address: 2101 L Street NW.

In a surprise note, Starbucks is pulling out of a College Park address. I guess college kids have grown tired of burnt coffee.

[Read what an ex-Starbucks employee-turned CP writer thought of working there].

A discussion thread on coffeed.com reveals D.C.’s much loved and maligned barista Nick Cho isn’t done having problems.

The owner of Murky Coffee in Arlington and former owner of the D.C. outpost seized by the city’s tax office (a small matter of 40 400 grand in unpaid sales tax) holds another title: chairman of the U.S. Barista Championship (USBC) Committee, a sweet appointment, considering his well-aired problems.

The news of his appointment hasn’t sat so well with some in the coffee community. Following the announcement, four USBC committee members resigned their positions. Though it’s not clear if all the resignations were related to Cho’s ascendance (one resigner claims he stepped down because of the volunteer hours involved) Sarah Allen’s certainly was.

On Coffeed.com, Allen explains how she’d been a member of the USBC comittee from the start in 2003 and how, “it broke my heart to leave.” Then she goes for the jugular: “I can only speak for myself. I left the committee because Nick was appointed chair of the committee. I have emailed with Nick and he asked me to be transparent about this, so there it is. I like Nick as a person, but had concerns about his abilities to be a committee chair. Let’s finally get all this shit out in the open, OK?”

For Allen, who edits the publication Barista magazine, part of getting it out in the open was posting a letter—addressed to “whom it may concern” and written by the owner of Coffee Labs Roasters Inc., Michael Love. A section of the letter states:

Does giving Mr. Cho new Chair positions promote sound business practices to the members of the SCAA? When in 3/21/08 Washington post stated “While conceding that he has been irresponsible, Cho chalked up the tax bill to ‘poor cash flow management’” In reference to section 3, I ask is it unlawful to not pay ones sales tax?

Reported on City Blog [sic, City Desk] 2/27/08 “It was old sales tax stuff we missed” Cho explained. Does that free him from the responsibility & discussion of his actions? If one breaks a law or rule because of ones, own ignorance does that free them from retribution with in the SCAA & with its members?”

Interestingly enough, the letter’s author knows what it’s like to break the rules and pay for it. As reported in a New York Times article, Love, in connection with a checkbook he purloined in 1994 and a few parole violations was, in 2006, sentenced to 6 months in a county jail. Love received a lighter-than-typical sentence because by the time he turned himself in, he had reformed his life and become a respectable business owner with loads of cafe customers willing to vouch for him.

—Rend Smith

Photo by CoffeeGeek

(photograph by Pilar Vergara)

Hang on to your mats, gentrifiers. The much-anticipated revival at the former Church of the Rapture at 14th and T is getting closer and, this time, won’t involve the laying-on of hands…unless that’s some new yoga move? Boundless Yoga is moving into 1840 14th St. NW, where it will share third-floor space with City Dance; the second floor will be a comedy dinner theater; and the ground floor is planned as a Diner/Tryst hybrid.

At least that’s the plan. Constantine Stavropoulos and Co. have to get by Dupont Circle’s ANC 2B first. Stavropoulos, owner of The Diner and Tryst in Adams Morgan and Open City in Woodley Park, is giving a presentation about plans at Wednesday’s meeting at the JCC, 16th and Q, around 8 p.m. Things could get sticky, we’ve heard.

The large space across from Café Saint Ex has been basically vacant since the church moved out a few years ago. We wrote about dashed condo dreams there at the cusp of the bust and, more recently, about artists kicked out because of the open elevator shaft.

That shaft will remain a defining feature of the building, which used to be a Model T assembly plant in the 1920s. (According to Stavropoulos, bumpers and lights were installed on the third floor, they’d paint cars on the second, and showcase them on the first, moving the parts with the giant elevator.)

The restaurateur and AU grad says unlike Open City (which is more Diner than Tryst), the new place will be a true blending of the coffeehouse/lounge/makeshift office that is Tryst and the 24-hour eggs-shakes-and-alcohol that is The Diner. They’ll be separate-but-not, he says, so Diner people can still be Diner people here and Tryst people can still grab a couch, but there will be opportunity for Diner/Trysts meet-cutes and whatnot. There’ll be a full bar, too, along with outdoor seating, pending liquor board and ANC approval.

So far, neighbors seem stoked, according to Stavropoulos. “Every single person I met, and I was out there all day Saturday, in some cases chasing after people as they were walking out of their homes, said ‘It’s about time,’” Stavropoulos says. One dropped what she was carrying “and hugged me.” The owners of the respective businesses are working as a team and using the same contractor, although they may open at different times. Stavropoulos says he hopes to open his yet-unnamed venture in March or April of next year.

It’s a bit of a gamble for Stavropoulos and not exactly cheap—it’ll probably cost him $2 million or more by the end. “The landlord is putting up some allowances, but it is going to be quite a bit of an investment. I’m leveraging everything, the businesses, the house, the dog, the cat, everything… but we’re excited. We’re hoping this will have a positive impact on the neighborhood.”

Foster Brothers Coffee, 3515 Connecticut Ave., in the old Park & Shop strip of Cleveland Park officially joins the rest of the dead soldiers in the neighborhood, including the next-door Whatsa Bagel, which closed more than a year ago. The coffeeshop had been on life support for some time, but along with So’s Your Mom in Adams Morgan, Foster’s was one of the few places left you could still score a Whatsa Bagel bagel.

Rumors about the closing are aflyin’ on the Cleveland Park listserv, to wit:

The unfortunate part to this story is the women who work there had little heads up and were kept in the dark as late as Friday. After the original message was posted Wednesday, I stopped by that night to check in with the staff I know and the owner had yet to say a word to them. As of Friday night,they were only told that there were “negotiations.”

Based on the current number of empty storefronts in our four retail sections on Connecticut (five counting Fosters), the length of vacancy (three have been empty more than a year), and type of business that has replaced three previously empty locations (CVS expansion, Bubbles Salon, and Foot Solutions are all
multistate operations of various size) it appears that the rents and conditions (mostly small spaces, some requiring a lot of work) are not practical for a local, independent business to be profitable in our neighborhood verses other sections of DC, VA, and MD. I remember the wish lists from previous related
discussions (hardware store, book store were two mentioned multiple times) and unless significant tax breaks are offered, I think we may need to reconsider what type of businesses can realistically thrive in Cleveland Park and support the local restaurants and businesses we *do* have.

This, after the epic battle regarding whether or not Cosi should be allowed to occupy the space that was Blockbuster’s on Connecticut between Ordway and Porter. For more on that sticky subject, check this analysis by Bill Adler, owner of the listserv and neighborhood advocate.

Murky fans everywhere (well, mostly in Capitol Hill) will be happy to know that, after a lengthy process, coffee-bean buff and former Murky manager Ryan Jensen has scored the lease for the now-vacant storefront.

Barista doyen Nick Cho—who, as you undoubtedly recall, operated Murky out of the 7th Street space until the unfortunate raid of the D.C. tax office prompted by an even more unfortunate $427,000 in unpaid sales taxes—speculates that landlords Stanton Development may have selected Jensen because “they want to carry over the good things about Murky without the bad.” (The good ostensibly being serving excellent coffee, the bad, getting seized.)

Jensen, who spent three years managing Murky’s D.C. location, currently works for Counter Culture Coffee, a company that supplies beans to a number of area cafes—including Cho’s Arlington shop, which has, so far, escaped the consequences of his recent tax troubles.

Jensen is getting set to abandon his current occupational digs in order to run his new cafe, Peregrine Espresso.

“It means wanderer or pilgrim,” says the congenial 28-year-old. “It’s a word I came across a few years back. I wrote it down and have been slightly obsessed with it every since.”

Jensen says he doesn’t exactly know when the place will be up and running; there are some minor changes he’d like to make to the space, but he hopes to open by the end of summer.

Jensen and his wife, Jill Jensen—who will co-own the business—are serious coffee-lovers and felt strong connections to the Murky Coffee on Capitol Hill. Actually, they met there in the summer of 2003 and married two years later. “It’s where our romance blossomed,” Jensen says.

When the place closed down, they feared someone disinterested—or maybe someone who doesn’t love coffee as much as they do or did not meet and fall in love there—might snag the shop.

So they went for it, along with numerous other entrepreneurs, hoping to grab the valuable commercial space. When Jensen got word last week his bid was accepted, he contacted Cho before the rumor mill could. Cho and Jensen are not only former employer and employee, they’re friends.

Cho isn’t dwelling on how things turned out. He says that, for the most part, he’s ready to move on. “The more we talk about it the more misunderstandings there are,” he contends.

As City Desk reported last month, Murky’s equipment is also ready to move on—to soon-to-open Big Chair Coffee in Anacostia.

—Rend Smith

photo by peregrine espresso

D.C. Foodies has a nice little scoop on Murky Coffee, which City Desk has been following like a lost dog. It appears many of Murky’s assets have been bought by a local businessman who plans to open a coffee shop near the Big Chair in Anacostia. A little digging unearths the Big Chair Coffee Business Plan, put together by sole owner Ayehubizu Yimenu, who appears to live in Greenbelt, Md. Left a message for him, but here’s the deal:

• The coffeeshop will open at 2122 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. SE and plans to serve sandwiches, salads, and pastries. Customer base includes employees across the street at D.C. Lottery and the Taxicab Commission.
• It’ll be open Monday through Friday until 6 p.m., closed Saturday, and open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, “delivering superior service to a community other coffee shops do not operate in.” Indeed Big Chair Coffee counts as its only competition a carryout deli half a block away.
• Beverage prices will range from $1.64 (12 oz coffee) to $3.92 (20 oz latte). Beans will come from California Coffee Roasters. Cold sandwiches made in-house will go for $5.49, salads run to $6.29.
• There will be indoor and outdoor seating.
• Employees will include two managers and four to eight more workers. Free samples and a marketing blitz are planned for the neighborhood.

Photo by jgoldmania

The travails of Murky Coffee at Eastern Market got a lot of attention in the local press. City Desk was all over it, as were community publications and the Washington Post. All the ink generated a lot of interest in the space that Murky vacated after losing the location to a seizure by the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue.

“The biggest thing we’ve learned from this process is that from now on, we’re putting seizure signs on our properties whenever we want to rent them,” jokes Ken Golding of Stanton Development, the company that owns the building that housed Murky, which owed the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid sales taxes. Golding says that, since the seizure, potential renters have veritably stormed the storefront.

Though Stanton has yet to select just who the much sought after lease will go to, the group of candidates has been boiled down to four. Golding says that he wishes the company could pick all the contenders, because “they’re all great.” He also assures coffee-loving Capitol Hillites that each prospective tenant has plans to open an independent coffee shop. Here’s to hoping that they independently pay their sales taxes.–Rend Smith

“Sometimes I Feel Like I’m the Only One Trying to Gentrify This Neighborhood,” reads the headline on an Onion article that one of my co-workers taped to his door. Every time I see this, I think of the Brookland listserv, of which I am a member. Please, enterprising businessmen and women, help the folks over in Brookland. They have dollars, and apparently, few places to spend them. Whenever a resident discovers a new restaurant or store nearby, he or she starts doing free PR. A recent post:

Hello, neighbors: I don’t know how many of you have checked out the wonderful Artmosphere Cafe, five minutes down Rhode Island Avenue from us, but you should! It has great live music, film showings, family game nights, and poetry readings in the evenings, a relaxing, peaceful atmosphere during the days, comfortable couches, and spacious tables, yummy healthy food and free wireless service. I highly recommend going there–its a great complement to our own Sureia’s. Both places need our economic support to survive! [Emphasis added.]

The sense of urgency does not end there. “Does this cafe have an address.? It’s tedious how many brooklanders post things w ith no address.They do it all the time,” writes one respondent.

By the way, the cafe in question isn’t even in D.C. It’s in Mount Rainier, Md. And it looks lovely.

Check out this Reuters story: “In a bid to reinvigorate lackluster U.S. traffic, Starbucks Corp will introduce a new, everyday brew called Pike Place Roast on Tuesday and for 30 minutes will hand out free 8-ounce (240 ml) samples.

Free cups of the new coffee, which the company said has a smoother flavor and finish, will be available starting at 9 a.m. on the West Coast and noon on the East Coast at all its roughly 7,100 company-operated U.S. stores.

“It is the best coffee that we have created, maybe, in our history,” Chief Executive Howard Schultz said on a call with reporters on Monday.”

The Capitol Hill Current Voice of The Hill reports that “Murky Coffee owes the District 427,395 in unpaid sales tax dating back to November 2004.” This information comes courtesy of Natalie Wilson of the city’s Office of Tax and Revenue. The new number puts Murky Cafe owner Nick Cho’s debt at almost twice that of what was reported here on Feb. 27.

For those with an unquenchable fascination with the ins and outs of the Capitol Hill Murky demise, here’s an e-mail interview with tax office Deputy General Counsel William Bowie:

1)How did Murky Coffee get to this point?

Answer: While I cannot provide you with specific taxpayer information, generally a seizure will take place if a taxpayer ignores tax deficiency notices we send them, fail to submit financial information to determine if they can maintain a payment plan, fail to meet with us to discuss the tax situation and fail to stay current on there tax obligations while discussing there delinquent situation, then they are candidates for a seizure. Also, if it involves delinquent sales tax for multiple periods they will also be candidates for a seizure.

2) What prompted you to move on Murky now? It’s been a couple of years, right?

See answer for #1

3)What are Murky’s options?

Answer: Pay the outstanding sales tax delinquency.

4) Will the Murky in Arlington be effected? Why or why not?

Answer: We have the option of pursuing the assets of a delinquent taxpayer wherever they may be. There is a legal process for doing this and this is an option we would look at executing.

5) What will happen to the property if owner Nick Cho is unable to pay?

Answer: If the taxpayer fails to pay the liability the seized assets owned by the taxpayer will be auctioned.

6) Did Cho receive any sort of warning on the morning of the seizure?

Answer: Before we seize taxpayer assets they generally will receive multiple notices and calls warning them of the consequences for failing to come into tax compliance.

7) Cho’s place was raided around 10 a.m. on a Tuesday. Is it usual practice to do this sort of thing during business hours? Why or why not?

Answer: If the establishment is open during normal work hours then that is when we will do the seizure. We have commenced doing some seizures of businesses that are only open after normal business hours. i.e., nightclubs, restaurants only open for dinner.

Cho said, “It’s like when you get caught speeding, was i speeding? Yes. Does this feel like bullshit? Yes.” What’s your take on his angst?

Answer: If a taxpayer knows he owes us sales tax monies, receives notices of such and still fails to make arrangements to pay, then they should know what the probable outcome will be. Sales tax monies are monies the merchant hold in trust for payment to DC government. Those monies are used to pay for city services. The merchant has no right to spend those monies for their own purposes. It is against the law.

9) How common is all this?

Answer: Unfortunately, as business tax delinquencies increase, particularly for failure to pay sales tax, our tax seizures will increase.

–Rend Smith

Hey, remember William Morva? The Dude-Ball-playing, barefoot, raw-meat-eating coffeeshop regular of Blacksburg? It took a jury under four hours to give him the death penalty. Can’t get enough? Check out Roanoke Times‘ online package “Homicide on the Huckleberry,” if purely for the title alone. —Jule Banville

Tacked to the window of Murky Coffee in Eastern Market is a half-torn letter that the shop has received from Attorney Morris R. Battino. The letter addresses Murky owner Nick Cho and states:

Dear Mr. Cho/ Murky Coffee LLC

As you are aware, I am legal counsel to and for the owner /landlord at 660/666. Pennsylvania Ave, S.E. Washington D.C. 20003

This is your official (30) day notice to quit and vacate the premises at 660/666 Pennsylvania Avenue, S.E. Washington D.C. 20003. Due to expiration of your month to month lease term. If you do not vacate or[sic] before May 1, 2008, the landlord/owner will file an action for possession in the Landlord and Tenant Branch of the District of Columbia Superior Court.

According to someone from the Battino office, Murky Coffee has an outstanding balance but will be evicted regardless of whether they pay their back rent or not.

The storefront has “possibly” already been rented to someone else, the source adds.

As reported previously in this space, Murky in late February was shut down by D.C. tax authorities over an unpaid tax bill tallying roughly $220,000.–Rend Smith

Thanks to a tip via Prince of Petworth, we learned that Columbia Heights Coffee is expanding. The coffee shop, located at 3416 11th St. NW, is a neighborhood favorite (free wi-fi, good service). So we decided to phone the owner this morning and get more details.

The shop’s owner Nadew Delnesaw says construction on the facade should begin in about four weeks. He still has to get permits for the interior construction. But the expansion should provide a huge increase in seating. The place currently has a capacity for 15 coffee lovers. The new space, he says, could provide seating for an additional 40.

The expansion will also provide room for a performance space, Delnesaw says, and room to show hard-to-find movies. The expansion will also mean a bigger breakfast menu and room to start roasting their own coffee on site. The owner hopes to do “customized roasting.”

Sounds like some serious upgrades.

Delnesaw says this is not in any way related to a certain big-box store opening: “We’re not competing with the Target.”