More News

A coffee shop many residents in the south Silver Spring neighborhood have credited for helping to revitalize the budding area from its industrial past will close Dec. 31 due in part to complications from construction surrounding the store, its owner announced Wednesday.

When Mayorga Coffee Factory opened on Georgia Avenue in 2003, south Silver Spring was transforming from a rundown neighborhood of vacant warehouses to a vibrant one with high-rise apartment buildings and young families.

"We were a perfect fit for community at that time," said Martin Mayorga, the store's owner. "Any day of the week, at night, you could barely walk through the place.

"It was a really nice natural fit that allowed us to become an anchor in south Silver Spring."

But Mayorga calls the store a "victim of our own success." With construction near the site redirecting traffic flow and limiting parking, sales dropped 50 percent at the Silver Spring location, Mayorga said, and the losses became too great to endure.

Increased sales from Mayorga's eight other locations in Maryland and Virginia helped forestall the store's closure, Mayorga said.

But when construction began on the nearby Veridian Apartments, it made access to the store difficult. And since construction has been completed, "many people left and never came back," said Barry Soorenko, who owns the property where Mayorga is located.

Mayorga wouldn't blame one specific redevelopment project on the store's closing.

But, "It doesn't take much creativity to look through the timeline and see how an extremely successful location can be closing," he said. "You can see the need for access and traffic flow and make some conclusions."

Mayorga notified the store's 15 employees of the closure on Wednesday. Mayorga said there will be efforts to reassign the employees to other positions within the company. He said he would consider opening a new store elsewhere in Silver Spring.

For more on the closing of Mayorga Coffee Factory and community reaction, read the Dec. 16 edition of the Silver Spring/Takoma Park Gazette.