Late in 2015, Capitol Hill lost one of its best places for hanging out, having coffee, and getting some work done. We’re not talking about the Bauhaus closure.

Visitors to the E Pike Caffe Vita will now find a sign informing them that the upstairs area of the classic Capitol Hill cafe is “employees only.” A cafe worker not authorized to speak with the media said the space is now used for Caffe Vita’s growing office needs.

In 2015, Vita marked 20 years of business in Seattle… and beyond. We wrote here about the roots of the E Pike coffee hangout starting with Cafe Paradiso. In 2014, the old space got a good scrub and new floors.

For customers, the closure of the upstairs space and its catbird seat view of E Pike has been partly offset by moving more tables into a first floor space crowded with Seattle U and Seattle Central students, and laptop jockeys sucking down some caffeine and bandwidth. We’ve asked Vita for information about the change but don’t expect to find more to the story than a space crunch — and the loss of one of CHS’s favorite places to work.

UPDATE: A representative from Caffe Vita said she would get back to CHS — we asked for more information about the closure and if there was any chance the upstairs would be reopened to customers in the future.