Fort Collins’ Everyday Joe’s to be reborn as The Neighbor

FORT COLLINS — Everyday Joe’s, a coffeehouse that had provided a warm and cozy refuge to residents and visitors in central Fort Collins but closed last September after 20 years, will be reborn as a coffee and event space run by three friends who want to offer something new while still honoring the spirit of the old.

The Neighbor is to open in late summer as a 4,100-square-foot coffeehouse and event space, said Alexandra Ruiz, one of the three partners in RGH Hospitality LLC, which leased the property at 144 S. Mason St. on May 1. The others are Sam Hummel, a residential real estate broker with the Crisafulli Group, and Connor Garland, who volunteered at Everyday Joe’s while in college from 2012 to 2014 and then directed the coffeehouse from 2017 until it closed. He met Ruiz while working there.

Hummel volunteered there from 2011 through 2013, one of nearly 1,000 who donated their time to Everyday Joe’s. “It’s been my unofficial home away from home,” he said.

The lease on the space had had been held since 2003 by Timberline Church, which ran Everyday Joe’s as a neighborhood outreach initiative but also had hosted performances by such up-and-coming musical acts as The Lumineers as well as Nathaniel Rateliff before he formed his more famous group the Night Sweats.

The church cited financial difficulties when it shuttered Everyday Joe’s.

“The day it closed was the best day in their history,” said Ruiz, who owns wedding and film company Canvas and Light and has “worked in the luxury wedding world for 10 years.”

The three partners had let building owners Kat Reeves and Mike Reeves of Buy It LLC — owners of nearby French restaurant Bistro Nautile — know earlier this year that they were interested.

Their plan is to open The Neighbor as a coffee cafe, multi-use event space and wedding venue. 

“There’s not a premier wedding venue in downtown Fort Collins,” Ruiz said. “We want this to be unique, a little more modern, but with the hospitality that Everyday Joe’s is known for.”

Added Garland, “She comes with all the expertise of running a wedding venue.”

They’d like to keep the legacy of live music alive there as well.

“Everyday Joe’s has a really rich history in Northern Colorado as a music venue, and we’re really excited to continue that tradition and bring back music and concerts on the weekends,” Hummel said.

He also wants The Neighbor to be known for “Fort Collins’ best coffee and libations, with beer, wine and cocktails.”

They plan to be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. as a cafe and bar, and stay open later for events. They’re hoping to fill the place with weddings and other events on weekends, but Hummel said “it felt like a waste to leave it closed during the week.”

Before all that can happen, Hummel said, the partners have had to install new air conditioning and lighting and “a lot of the mechanical and electrical. We’re reconfiguring the staircase, extending the patio and adding new furniture and doors.”

“I get to design the space, and it’s going to be so beautiful and different from what Fort Collins is used to,” Ruiz said. All that takes money, though, and Ruiz said private investors from the Fort Collins area have been a big help, as has a Kickstarter campaign “because it turns out air conditioning is extremely expensive.”

They’ve also employed John Sailer, the same general contractor who prepared the Everyday Joe’s space 21 years ago.

“We just want to capture the natural beauty of the space itself,” Garland said. “We’re trying to preserve what is inherently magical about a 100-year-old space, with its brick, exposed trusses and natural light.

“We want it to be a place that you belong, that you’re a part of something special,” Garland said. “We want it to be welcoming for the business person, the county worker, the student, and our houseless friends.”

Everyday Joe’s “was a nonprofit volunteer coffee house where you could come knowing nothing about specialty coffee and still enjoy it,” Hummel said. “We’re hoping to carry that into a new chapter. It’s not going to be Everyday Joe’s, but we want to carry that spirit.”

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