Forced to move by condos, Genuine Joe Coffee House finds new life at a church

There existed a time — when many in Austin might have thought a Chemex pour-over was a method to treat a clogged shower, and ordering coffee from an app was still a twinkle in Steve Jobs’ eye — that coffee shops here served as relaxed meeting spots, refuges for slackers and those working in their minds and not their laptopped silos. Think: Les Amis or Flipnotics.

They were the kind of shops you might see in “Slacker” or “Singles.” Genuine Joe Coffee House on Anderson Lane shares that DNA. And soon, it will suffer the same fate as many of Austin’s late, great coffee shops. The current location will close in March, and the building will be razed for new condos. One man’s paradise is another’s place to park investment money.

But, unlike Les Amis and Flipnotics, Genuine Joe will have a second act, one imbued with hope from an unexpected partner that tempers the heartache often attendant with change.

Josh Brown discovered the ramshackle shop at the northern edge of Crestview not long after couple David Swainston and Victor Levi opened it in 2005. A graduate of McCallum High School who moved to Austin in the mid-1990s, the guitar-playing songwriter was drawn to the funky shop and its mish-mash warren of oddly furnished spaces by an open-mic night.

Austin restaurant news:Austin chefs and restaurants nab six James Beard semifinalist nominations

A stage where he could work on his art brought him back as much as the sense of community fostered by Swainston and Levi did. The cafe provided a safe space for members of the LGBTQ recovery community, and that sense of inclusion extended to an all-are-welcome vibe that resonated with Brown.

He started working at Genuine Joe in 2009. “It was a place where I could get a paycheck and feel comfortable and use that as inspiration,” he said. In 2017, he bought the business from Swainston and Levi.

Brown amplified the community aspect of Genuine Joe. He offered up the various rooms of the shop, which looks like it was decorated from 50 different trips to the City-Wide Vintage Sale, for cheap rental (food and beverage minimums) to countless groups that gathered to discuss everything from knitting to emotional health.

Related:Pancakes, bagels and migas: These are the best breakfasts in Austin

“The idea of having a community around anything you do” was the overriding mission of the business, Brown said.

The pandemic put its grip on Genuine Joe’s lifeline, as it did with so many, but Brown navigated that trauma, even finding purpose in it. He worked as the cafe’s sole employee, not taking a paycheck for several months, and shifted service to a takeout model for 16 months.

During the downtime, his employees and fellow artists reimagined the space, introducing new artwork and furniture and painting the rooms of the aging building that looks like a Voltron created by your funky aunt from Santa Fe.

“We became the lifeline for the neighborhood during the pandemic,” Brown said of Genuine Joe, which reopened its doors fully in July 2021. “People say community is an amenity, but over that time, the community became something that sustained the neighborhood.”

But by the time the shop fully reopened, its warm vibes had met cold reality in the spring of 2021. Brown saw a sign at his lot that was also home to several other local businesses, notifying the public that the area had been rezoned. The Evins family, which has owned the Genuine Joe property and the adjacent lot since the early 1980s, sold the land in 2021 to Ledgestone Development Group.

Brown, who had been operating on a year-to-year lease, said he found out that the property was being developed into condos and that his time was limited. The coffee shop’s stay was extended a couple of times, but March will bring its final days. An exact date has not yet been announced.

“It was a symbolic knife to the heart of the idea that there are iconic places in this town that make it special and valued,” Brown said.

The news sent a heartbroken Brown, drowning in the face of rising Austin real estate costs, scrambling for options in places as far afield as Manor. The answer to his prayers eventually came from someone who had been going to Genuine Joe almost as long as Brown.

Billy Tweedie, priest at the nearby Episcopal Church of the Resurrection, first visited Genuine Joe in 2006 after moving to Austin. Like most, he found Genuine Joe to be “super friendly, warm and welcoming to all.”

After moving from St. David's Episcopal Church to his new congregation in North Austin, the priest used the front room at Genuine Joe to convene a weekly senior bible study for seven years.

“They welcomed us in, and we loved being there, and they were accommodating in a very fun way,” Tweedie said.

When Tweedie, who shepherds a congregation of a few dozen at his church at 2200 Justin Lane, heard about Brown’s predicament, he thought the church could be of service.

Tweedie, who has led the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection since 2013, was planning to renovate part of the building constructed in the late 1960s. He decided that the four-classroom building connected to the church would make a great home for Genuine Joe and could also offer space that would continue both the church’s and Genuine Joe’s missions of giving a meeting place to various community groups.

“It was a no-brainer,” Tweedie said. “They mean a lot to the community, not just for their coffee, but for their kindness and engagement. I think it can be a fun example of maybe how churches can use their space. I certainly hate seeing local business get pushed out for condos. There’s not a lot we can do about that, but finding the things we can do about it is kind of fun.”

Genuine Joe will host a fundraiser at the church on Saturday with live music, including from Brown’s band, Thunder People, starting at 6 p.m., as well as family-friendly art installations and activities. The suggested $10 donation is to raise money for Genuine Joe's relocation. Brown hopes to have Genuine Joe operational from a truck on the church’s property in April, with construction on the new space, as well as a nonprofit community cafe in another building at the church, to begin later this year.

“The kindred spirits are here,” Brown said of the new partnership. “We’ve learned a lot from the intentionality of how we set up the Genuine Joe space and set the tone. I’m excited to bring that to a space from the ground up, with that level of intentionality.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Genuine Joe Coffee House closing on Anderson Lane but will relocate