(WSB file photo)

By Tracy Record

West Seattle Blog editor

Thanks for all the tips about this – a brand-new real-estate listing that startled a lot of West Seattleites when it went up this morning: 5612 California SW, site of the century-old Craftsman house that is the home of C & P Coffee Company (WSB sponsor), has been put up for sale in a listing describing the parcel as “a terrific development opportunity.”

The coffeehouse is far more than a place to get your latte – it’s a beloved community center and hangout, a place that hosts music and meetings, bazaars and bake sales, donation drives, and one-on-one conversations that no doubt have changed some lives.

The building is NOT owned by C & P Coffee’s proprietors Cameron and Pete Moores (shown at right in WSB photo from C & P’s 10th anniversary in 2013) – they are longtime tenants. We talked with Pete minutes ago. They are “scrambling to try to figure out some way to not only save the building but also save our business too,” he told us. Their landlord just told them days ago about the plan to put the site up for sale – and it “hit us like a ton of bricks” – but they were still “staggered” when the $1,250,000 listing went up this morning.

“We still have a lease that gets us through 2020 – so it’s two years-plus before they can boot us out,” Pete said, but that’s not much consolation. The business he and Cameron have built for 15 years – opened on Valentine’s Day 2003 – “has become more than a coffee shop in the neighborhood, it’s become an important part of our community and we want to save that. So we’re reaching out to everybody we know, looking for somebody who might want to partner with us to buy the property.”

Without a partner, Pete says, $1,250,000 is way out of their range. “We’re just a little mom-and-pop business and it’s like we’re up against the big boys. … Our fingers are crossed that somebody can help us.” Or else, another of those “beautiful houses on California Avenue” is going away, Pete laments; the real-estate listing assesses the site simply as “Value in land – 50X150, level, paved alley.” (The 7,500-square-foot site is zoned Lowrise 3.)

If you – or someone you know – might be interested in/able to help them, e-mail candpco@comcast.net. In the meantime, Pete says, they’re just going to “work their asses off and try to figure it out.”