Coffee shop closes in downtown Tacoma. ‘We thought momentum would be there earlier.’

Dancing Goats Coffee, an Olympia-based roaster that just a few years ago had footholds in two Tacoma locations, pulled the plug on its downtown cafe last month.

It’s the latest bump in the road for the Brewery Blocks development and the surrounding neighborhood that includes University of Washington Tacoma, the Museum District and the Tacoma Convention Center. The short-lived Stanford’s Steak closed on Pacific Avenue in February.

The cafe opened in January 2022 at 2102 Commerce St. At the time, Camp Colvos Brewing and Pizza Co. had been serving New York-style pies, beer and cocktails in the next-door unit for about a year, while Incline Cider House debuted upstairs in 2019.

Dancing Goats, until recently known by its since-retired company name Batdorf and Bronson Coffee Roasters, had signed onto the $100-million Brewery Blocks project in 2018. As the pandemic tightened its grip on 2020, two of the just-announced food businesses abdicated their leases. The coffee shop vowed to stick with it.

Timing was not on its side, said Aaron Shively, vice president of operations for Dancing Goats, which has outposts in Olympia and Atlanta, Georgia. (The Olympia flagship moved to a slightly smaller-footprint store in April 2022.)

“It’s never easy closing your doors, and we’re not used to it,” Shively told The News Tribune in a phone call a week after the last day of service, March 31. “Obviously there’s frustration, but we’re certainly not going to point the finger at any one thing.”

The 36-year-old company believed in the location and, more broadly, in Tacoma.

A Dancing Goats Coffee Bar was also an original anchor tenant at the market in Ruston, another multi-faceted commercial space that ran into pandemic construction woes (and unrelated legal challenges with that property developer). It opened amid scaffolding in 2020 only to close at the end of 2021.

Downtown, said Shively, his team anticipated more foot traffic and more “activation” of the area, including from offices and residential apartments at the Brewery Blocks itself and from surrounding buildings.

While empathizing with the benefits of remote work, he noted that the continued deflation of office workers has been “hard on small business retailers in general.”

The cafe attracted a core of loyal customers who appreciated that it felt sort of tucked-away. In recent months, staff had partnered with UWT on coffee service and catering at events.

“It was finally starting to move in the right direction,” said Shively.

DOWNTOWN TACOMA UPS AND DOWNS

Comparing costs and revenue with Dancing Goats cafes in urban centers of Atlanta, the rent was not necessarily untenable, according to Shively, but the model hinges on busy mornings followed by a late-morning burst and afternoon pick-me-up pocket.

“The guests that did come through our doors, we were so happy to serve them,” he said. “We just needed twice as many, and we would have been fine.”

David Schroedel, executive director of the Downtown Tacoma Partnership, told The News Tribune on Thursday that the agency, a nonprofit business improvement area funded predominantly by property owners via a special-use fee, was “really disappointed to see them go.”

Schroedel said the closure was a bit of a surprise but noted that traffic drivers, from office occupancy to events, remain stubbornly steady to their 2022 levels.

“We’re frustrated, but we still want that development to succeed,” Shively replied when asked if the precise location was an impediment. He referenced the nightlife at Camp Colvos, Incline Cider House and The Living TapRoom, which opened last year.

The cafe unit is equipped with state-of-the-art coffee equipment, a small retail section, two bathrooms, ample seating and a small patio. Dancing Goats still holds the lease and is actively working with a broker to find a sub-tenant, confirmed Mike Bartlett, CEO of Horizon Partners Northwest, the property developer.

“It could be a great space for another coffee shop,” said Shively, or another food business that doesn’t need a full-fledged kitchen. There is a small back room that could also be updated to accommodate other needs.

The possibility of a Dancing Goats cafe elsewhere in Tacoma is not impossible, he added, but it likely wouldn’t be downtown.

“Retail and coffee shop owners just have to be really, really kind of confident going into new places,” said Shively, who has worked for the company for more than two decades. “The days of going to try and find prime real-estate in downtown cores are farther and fewer between.”

DTP’s Schroedel sees somewhat of a “mixed narrative” in the big-picture view in downtown Tacoma.

“There were closures and there will always be closures,” he said. But he pointed to the 24 new businesses that opened their doors last year, including eclectic boutiques, restaurants, not one but two winery tasting rooms, a cider bar, a luxury salon and other coffee shops.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified the DTP’s funding source. Most of its budget comes from downtown property owners.

This story was originally published April 12, 2024 at 10:00 AM.