Paralegal Runs Community Meeting Cafe

DRYDEN — Monica Knight admits that businesses on the village's main street are “drying up and emptying out.” But she's not discouraged — she sees it as a challenge.

In a building surrounded by shuttered windows with “For Rent” signs taped to them, she and a bevy of other committed community members envisioned revitalizing the area with a place where residents could gather to talk, relax and socialize with their neighbors. That was in August.

On Feb. 28, their creation, the not-for-profit Dryden Community Center Café, officially opened for business at 1 W. Main St. The coffee shop, located at the village's four corners at the intersection of routes 38 and 13, serves up hot coffee, grilled paninis, free wireless Internet and a place for locals to congregate in a town that many said had no good central meeting place.

“The most common comment we heard was there's no place to gather, relax, have a good cup of coffee, and just chat,” Knight, the Café's vice president, said. “People have been hungry for something like this for a while here. There was a dearth of community space.”

Since 1836, when it was built, the building at 1 W. Main St. has been a place to mingle with neighbors — it's been grocery store and, most recently, the Brooklyn Diner. But for almost the past two years, it's been a vacant shell.

That's no longer the case.

As she worked at the Café on Saturday with fellow trustee and board president Wendy Martin, Knight outlined all the events they've planned: first, a grand opening this Friday; live music three days a week; family game nights; talks by local authors and professors; and events for kids whenever possible.

Martin and Knight are newcomers to the Dryden area, so for them, the Café is also about making new friends and bringing their adopted community closer together in a shared space, they said. With a core crew of about 30 volunteers who helped build and help run the space, and a $3,000 grant from the town of Dryden, the Café board members have lassoed the community into their project.

“We're trying to put heart into our community and so we wanted this to be in the heart of the village,” Martin said. “People have been coming to this location for a long time.”

A reading and book swap room in the back was furnished for free with donations, a stage in front provides room for coffee drinkers and people watchers, and in the center — with the functional style of a mother's kitchen — the espresso bar/sandwich counter serves up hot food and drinks. Bulletin boards, volunteer sign up sheets, a chalkboard and local artwork adorn the walls.

But even as the place has come together, Martin said there have been many challenges in running a not-for-profit Café with a mostly volunteer staff, so they hired several paid staff members, like Virgil resident Amanda Underwood. She said she likes working in a non-traditional coffee shop.

“There are challenges trying to organize everything, but it's fun to make up the rules as we go,” she said.

For Martin and Knight, an administrative assistant and a paralegal, respectively, managing a restaurant was a completely new experience.

“We're a bunch of non-restaurant people trying to start a restaurant,” she said. “But every time we've needed something, someone's walked in and said, ‘I can do that.'”

Even before the grand opening, the community has already been quietly exploring the new coffee shop.

In the back reading room on Saturday, 3-year-old Truman Lyons picked out a book to read while he and his parents, Chris and Mary Beth, of Dryden, ordered hot chocolate all around. The Lyonses stop into the Café twice a week, they said.

“I was kind of skeptical at first, but it has been amazing to see how this place has come together,” Chris Lyons said.

They just moved into town from Texas, and for them, the Café has also been a great place to meet their neighbors, Lyons said.

“There's a lot to make us isolated in this society, and so anything that reverses that is better,” he said. “(The Café) has been filled to capacity with people of all ages. It's exceeded our expectations, and they have great hot chocolate — what's not to like?” (Source)