Coming soon: kids, coffee & community at Café au Play

By Nicole Morales
The Portland Upside
December 2009

An old drive-thru is being transformed into Café au Play at Tabor Commons, an inviting community space and nonprofit coffeehouse on SE Division and 56th Ave., scheduled to open Spring 2010.

The vision: a nonprofit coffeehouse with plenty of play space for the kids as well as a place where parents can socialize or join community-run sessions about easy, tasty treats for the whole family. Students, honored citizens, and parents alike would be encouraged to interact via gardening activities, story time, budgeting classes, and yoga. Is this all possible under the same roof?

Kristin Heying definitely thinks so. She and two other mothers imagined a family-oriented coffeehouse when her daughter, Sophie, was only three. At that time, she and the other moms attempted to hang out at their local coffee spots. At every meeting, they got the feeling they just weren’t jiving with the coffeehouse atmosphere: solos on laptops, couples in conversation, people-watchers, and baristas behind the counters trying to ignore their children.

Seven years in the planning, Café au Play will open this spring. In keeping with the family theme, her own father, Charles Heying, fully supports the idea and continues to help plan, organize, and renovate. He initially suggested it be a nonprofit enterprise.

Come early next year, families will have their own place to mingle among Portland’s rich coffee house scene. Café au Play will offer ample opportunities to build community within a safe and diverse multigenerational setting.

In the three years leading up to the café’s opening, Kristin and team have been busy with renovations at the former ill-reputed Drive Thru Wake Up Deli building at 5633 SE Division St. in Portland’s Mount Tabor neighborhood. Today, the site is known as Tabor Commons, a project of the Southeast Uplift Neighborhood Coalition (SEUL).

Altogether, over 75 board members, volunteers, and others have been involved in the Tabor Commons site renovation. There are countless community supporters who have followed the Café au Play story since its beginning, 700 readers alone, via the café’s listserv. Moreover, an estimated 25 local business owners, professionals, community groups, and artists have donated materials, reduced fees, or lent expertise.

Café au Play’s business plan is unique in three ways: it formed a partnership with the organizers of Tabor Commons, a community-owned building; it combines the coffeehouse air with the helping hands of a community resource center; its programs and services are patron-directed.

A true hybrid, the café will sustain itself through coffee bar sales while simultaneously offering a welcoming space for people with children and others looking to get involved in their community.
Says founder Kristin, “We wanted to create the coffeehouse environment, but our focus is on community programs, services, support networks—it’s not on the coffeehouse business.”

As for the marriage of Café au Play and Tabor Commons, Kristin believes it’s a happy one.

“The community wanted a positive gathering space for the Tabor Commons site, so Paul Leistner and I came together with our ideas.”

Paul Leistner serves on the board of SEUL—a coalition of twenty neighborhoods—to promote and foster citizen involvement for Mount Tabor neighborhood betterment. He was instrumental in securing the once neglected Drive Thru Wake Up Deli building and lot.

With so much work under their belts and a spring opening scheduled, there is still plenty of room for community involvement. Kristin reports that the Café au Play board will be planning, marketing and setting up their second annual Jingle Mingle Holiday Sale to raise start-up funds for the 2010 opening. The holiday tree and gift sale should help fund the final phase of renovations and the culmination of a 7-year-long dream.

“It’s not easy to be one person raising a child or children, but the part that makes that a little bit easier is to have a good support system. I realized I was not the only one needing support—all parents need support.”

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Looking to get involved and show your support? Start off by visiting the Tabor Commons Café au Play site on the northeast corner of Southeast 57th and Division during the Jingle Mingle Holiday Sale open weekends from 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. until Dec. 20.
Also visit http://cafeauplay.org for more information about the café including volunteering opportunities, a photo gallery, and a calendar.

Nicole strives to connect people via multicultural education and writing. She teaches ESL at a private university outside of Portland and welcomes your inquiries at nmorales.writes@gmail.com