hill country observerThe independent newspaper of eastern New York, southwestern Vermont and the Berkshires

 

Arts & Culture February-March 2016

 

Updating a folk-music landmark

Deal with developer sets stage for changes at historic Caffe Lena

 

The narrow, steep staircase from Phila Street has been the main entrance to Caffe Lena since it opened in 1960. A planned renovation would allow visitors to reach the coffeehouse by elevator.Thomas Dimopoulos photoBy THOMAS DIMOPOULOS
Contributing writer

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y.

 

The narrow, steep staircase from Phila Street has been the main entrance to Caffe Lena since it opened in 1960. A planned renovation would allow visitors to reach the coffeehouse by elevator.Thomas Dimopoulos photo


A historic downtown coffeehouse and one of the region’s most prominent developers have formed a partnership that each hopes will enhance their operations long into the future.


Caffè Lena, which first opened in May 1960 as a small beatnik coffeehouse, has hosted some of the best-known performers of the folk music scene for more than a half-century. Hailed as one of the longest continuously running folk-oriented coffeehouses in the country, the cafe has faced and conquered challenges to its survival in the past. Most recently, those challenges have been structural, because of the aging of the 19th century building it occupies on Phila Street.


“When we got the news that our building was going to require major renovation, we had to make a choice,” said Sarah Craig, the executive director of Caffè Lena. “Should we move into a new space somewhere around Saratoga and have a carefree building? Should we stay where we are and make the building work for us?


“We decided to stay,” she continued, “because the magic that people feel when they come in here is the spirit of everybody who has been here before them -- from the people who have played on the stage to the people who have sat on these chairs. That is something that is integral to the Caffè Lena experience.”


In 1998, an all-volunteer board raised $400,000 to purchase the café, and now its nonprofit real estate holding entity owns the property, which houses Caffè Lena on the second floor as well as Hattie’s Restaurant, Cole’s Woodwind Shop and Sweet Mimi’s Cafe & Bakery on the ground floor. It also owns an adjoining parking lot.


“We saw the lot years ago as something that might get us where we would need to go in the future,” said Craig, who joined the Caffè Lena staff in 1995.


In 2013, the café launched a $1.5 million capital campaign, with $1.25 million intended specifically for renovation. The campaign raised $350,000 in donations and inspired discussions with local developer Sonny Bonacio about a potential collaboration.

An architect’s rendering shows the new entrance that would be built on Phila Street to connect Caffe Lena to a new building planned for the site of the coffeehouse’s current parking lot. The two buildings would share an elevator.

Courtesy Frost Hurff ArchitectsFilling a parking lot
In late January, Bonacio and Caffe Lena officials announced the café would sell its parking lot to Bonacio Construction, which plans to build a four-story mixed-use building on the site.

 

An architect’s rendering shows the new entrance that would be built on Phila Street to connect Caffe Lena to a new building planned for the site of the coffeehouse’s current parking lot. The two buildings would share an elevator.

Courtesy Frost Hurff Architects


Bonacio would undertake some renovation work at the café, and the project would include construction of an elevator that would serve both the coffeehouse and the new Bonacio building next door. (The café has long wanted an elevator to make it easier for patrons to reach its second-floor performance space, which now is only accessible via a single, steep staircase from Phila Street.)


“They are building the elevator for their building, but there will be a connector between their building and our building so it will also serve Caffè Lena,” Craig explained.


“They are taking on the responsibility for some of the large construction components of our building -- the roof, the flooring, stabilizing the façade -- and also making a donation to the café, so the entire value in terms of our campaign is $500,000,” she added. “That takes a huge chunk off our hands that we were going to have to raise money for. We’ve already raised $350,000, and we have their $500,000, so now we’re two-thirds done on the campaign.”


The new 1,300-square-foot Bonacio building would fill what is now the Caffe Lena parking lot at the southwest corner of Phila and Henry streets, just south of the Saratoga Springs Public Library. The building will include eight residential units on the upper floors and commercial property at the street level. The plan is expected to be reviewed by the city’s land use boards beginning in February, and Bonacio hopes to start construction in the spring.


The café plans to do its renovation work in the summer and re-open in the fall. Apart from adding an elevator, other changes at Caffe Lena will include a more user-friendly staircase, installation of start-of-the-art sound and lighting systems and a performance space nearly double the current size. Seating capacity will be expanded from 85 to 110. To increase space for performances, the kitchen, bathrooms and performer dressing rooms wlll be moved to an adjoining hall that once housed a small theater.


“I think people are going to be very excited by how the space feels,” Craig said. “It will have the intimacy we’re accustomed to, the same furniture, but my goal is to enhance that very magical feeling you have when you walk in. I want people to be overwhelmed when they step into the room.”


While the renovation is under way, Caffè Lena plans to take its show on the road. It is currently arranging performances at a variety of Saratoga-area venues for this summer.

 

Espresso to craft beer
In another potential change, and one that may seem radical to coffeehouse folk purists, the café has applied for a liquor license.


“At this point it’s still just an application, and it’s hard to know how fast that is going to move,” Craig said. “We’re hoping it will be ready by the time of the re-opening, so we can serve beer and wine.”


Craig added that she does not think serving alcohol will greatly alter the café’s ambience.
“I trust the momentum of the café’s culture will preserve the listening room’s all-ages atmosphere,” she said. “That’s not going to change. If it were to be compromised in any way by serving beer and wine, we would just ditch it, because our culture comes before anything.”
Craig said there has been a generational shift among folk roots music fans.


“We are listening to what the next generation wants,” she said. “Back in the early ‘60s, the drink of choice for people immersed in this music scene was espresso. Now, people under the age of 40 associate craft beer with roots music.”


It was Lena Spencer who introduced Saratoga to espresso and Italian pastries when she and her husband Bill first opened the doors of their beatnik café in May 1960. Bill, a sculptor who taught at Skidmore College, would soon be out of the picture, however, after skipping out of town with a college coed, leaving Lena and the café to fend for themselves.


Lena booked afternoon hootenannies and hosted weekend residencies with musicians who performed three sets a night and often stayed over at her apartment in the Collamer Building on Broadway. She also made frequent trips to New York City and made connections with key figures in the thriving Greenwich Village folk scene of the early 1960s. The café’s reputation grew among musicians and theater groups traveling around the Northeast.


Bob Dylan first visited the club in 1961 and played a full weekend of shows for which he was paid a total of $50. Appearances by Rosalie Sorrels brought admirers like Hunter S. Thompson and William Kennedy to the venue, and in the fall of 1965, Don McLean made his first of his many appearances at the café.


Musicians like Pete Seeger, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Arlo Guthrie and Ani DiFranco performed at the café over the decades.


Lena ran the café for nearly 30 years. In 1989, she was severely injured after a fall down the café’s steep staircase, and she died a few weeks later. It took a few years after her death, but a capital campaign raised $400,000, and Lena’s legacy was secured.


“Had the café not taken that opportunity to purchase the building, we would have been gone by now, no doubt about it,” Craig said.