UPDATE: Owners of The Coop, a coffee shop and co-op bakery based in Derby, confirmed they’ve purchased the Common Grounds house and will likely open in mid-August. The owners also say groups that previously met at Common Grounds, including 12-step and other recovery programs, are still welcome to meet there.
Jennifer Barnhart said she walked into Common Grounds Coffee House almost eight years ago.
She was 30 days sober and living in a recovery home when people guided her to meetings there to focus on her recovery.
“I looked in … the front room lobby, and there was the baristas. And I said, ‘I want to be like them someday,’ ” Barnhart said.
“I started out just hanging out here. And eventually, I got a job. I was 14 months, 15 months sober.”
Barnhart is now a barista and manager of the shop near Douglas and Volutsia.
On July 23, she’ll celebrate eight years of sobriety – this time without Common Grounds.
The coffee shop is run by Seventh Direction, an outpatient addiction treatment center co-owned by Randy Ecker and Diana Lizarraga.
As the fentanyl crisis continues in the community, Seventh Direction has chosen to devote more of its attention to treatment and to close the coffee shop.
“The past two years, we have dealt with so many more cases of people using fentanyl overdosing,” Lizarraga said. “I don't know how many clients we've lost, or people that we know, friends, to overdoses.”
The co-owners have helped people in recovery for decades, but the current crisis is unlike anything they’ve ever seen.
“The last few years have been almost traumatizing to us,” Ecker said, “because I've never seen this many people dying from drug addiction. And I've been doing this 32 years.”
The converted house has been around for about a decade, and the coffee shop serves not only people in recovery but the general community.
The first floor has several lounging areas with a coffee bar. Upstairs are even more rooms, and the third floor can fit about 20 people, making it ideal for meetings for people in recovery.
“There was a women's meeting that started here, and they outgrew the space,” Ecker said. “Now they're over there. And … they've got 40, 50 women that go to it.”
In its final week, Barnhart has reminisced on the last several years she’s spent there.
“I don't know where I'd be without that front porch, right there,” she said.
“It's heard many in the recovery program, Fourth Steps, many triumphs, sorrows, the in-betweens.”
There’s even the time when Barnhart decided she was going to get her driver’s license again and others at the shop helped her.
“I studied out there, and everybody quizzed me,” she said. “And within a week, I got my driver's license.”
Barnhart estimates that hundreds – maybe even thousands – of people were able to get help through Common Grounds.
Community like that is what makes places special for people in recovery, Ecker said.
“Once you realize that there's… a whole culture of people in recovery, and they're having fun, and they're not miserable human beings and they're doing it sober, and then it's like, ‘Wow, I don't have to go back,’ ” Ecker said.
“You can have fun without using because that's a big thing. People don't think you can early in recovery.”
For Lizarraga, it also helps give people a purpose – including herself.
“If I can be a part of somebody changing their life, I am grateful. I'm honored. I'm humbled by having this opportunity,” she said, “and I know that this is what I'm going to be doing ‘til my daughters put me underground.”
The owners hope that whoever ends up buying the property will continue what they started.
“I think there's a plan in place. We don't know what it is yet,” Ecker said, “but a power greater than ourself has a plan for this place, and it will be a good one.”
For the many groups that meet in the space, they’ll have to find a different home until the new owners decide what they want to do with it.
On the shop’s last day Friday, it will host a celebration with free coffee for the community.
As for Barnhart, she’ll continue working for Seventh Direction as a peer mentor and housing coordinator. She’s also optimistic that the new owners of the house will continue its mission of helping others in recovery.
“I just hope whoever gets this has love and kindness behind it because that's what it’s given to me,” she said. “It gave me my life back and my family.
“I love coffee. And I don't know where I'd be if I didn't have the coffee place, but I'll make my own coffee at home now.”
