Posted 1:02 am Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Send to Kindle
Downtown Coffee Lounge Closing On Wednesday
By CASEY MURPHY
Business Editor
Tyler's Downtown Coffee Lounge will close at the end of the business day Wednesday.
Owners Kimberly and Ron Mabry said they plan to close the shop to have time for other ventures.
"I love doing this," Mrs. Mabry said. "I'm going to miss everyone."
But, she said, she didn't want to commit to extending her lease for another three years.
"We've got other things going on," she said.
Mabry said the shop is not losing money and they already have had inquiries from people to take over the lease so the coffee shop could potentially just change hands. But, "right now, we're focused on closing," he said.
Mabry, a local architect, has other downtown projects he is working on, such as the renovations of the former Carlton Hotel building and The Broadway
building.
He said the coffee shop is "taking up a lot of our time."
Mrs. Mabry said to stay
open,
the shop needs someone who is committed to taking it to the next level and extending the business hours to include evenings and weekends.
"I think we've opened up a gateway to someone else" taking it over, Mabry said, adding that he would certainly like the coffee shop to continue to stay in business, just not on their time. He said they would turn the shop over to someone else, but only if they found the right people.
He said his wife put a lot of work into the business, and it is hard to walk away from that. Mabry said he believes his wife has done the right thing to establish the Downtown Coffee Lounge into a "downtown icon," and he hopes the right person can come along and maintain that status. He said it was not their goal to take away the coffee shop from downtown customers.
"There's only so much time in a day," he said. "And as far as I'm concerned, there is only so much time left."
The Downtown Coffee Lounge, which opened at 200 W. Erwin St. in March 2010, will be closed by the Mabrys for the last time at 5 p.m. Wednesday.
