When Tom Haynie is asked about the Downtown Coffee Company, his quick response is often, “You interested in opening a restaurant?” That’s because the Downtown Coffee Company has closed, and Haynie, the chief financial officer of Manpower, a Las Vegas staffing agency run by Andy Katz, is fielding all inquiries about leasing the space on the corner of Third and Bridger streets.
“It did some good business, and a lot of people are disappointed it shut down,” Haynie says. “The problem was it wasn’t consistently open in the evenings, and you need to be open in the evenings to make it.”
A year ago the Downtown Coffee Company was one if the city’s more promising downtown businesses targeting a purely locals clientele. A quintessential labor of love for a couple of childhood friends, Katz and Jim Barbarite, the Coffee Company was an ambitious project years in the making. Housed in the former First United Methodist Church, which was built on the corner of Third and Bridger streets in 1905, the business happily mixed a deli, coffee house and jazz club (the church building is owned by Katz’s family, under the name the Katz Family Trust).
For several months, Friday nights rocked with weekly jam sessions known as Jazz at The Church. The shows were led by renowned percussionist Bobby Morris (who over the past several decades has backed Elvis Presley, Nat King Cole, Louis Prima and the Rat Pack) and organized by his son, Daryl. Performers who stopped by, unannounced and unscheduled, included accordion legend Dick Contino, venerable impressionist Babe Pier, clarinet virtuoso Steve Johnson and powerhouse vocalist Mary Oliver.
It was not uncommon for top-notch performers to be shut out as the show closed at 1 a.m. But the deli and coffee house closed in May, and despite efforts to keep the business afloat with the jazz shows (which were not enough to pay the $7,500-per-month lease), the entire operation shut down in June.
The Coffee Company would have been one of Downtown’s inspiring success stories. What will occupy the building next? “I get two to three calls a week on it,” Haynie says. “What we’re looking at is office space.”