Golden West isn’t leaving The Avenue after all, but the Hampden church where the cafe was mulling a move will still become a restaurant.
Developer Josh Mente won approval Tuesday from the city’s Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals to convert the former St. Mary’s Episcopal Church and Outreach Center’s sanctuary into a dining room.
Mente said he’s looking for a restaurant operator who wants to take over the 6,000-square-foot space, which will keep original design touches like hardwood floors, beamed ceilings and stained glass windows. The main chapel has marble accents, an altar and an organ.
“We would love to find someone that can be a good steward for the space,” said Mente, who bought the historic church at 3900 Roland Ave. last month. He and business partner Jesse Vann also have plans to add 29 apartments to the building, which dates back to the 1870s.
Mente already owns another historic Hampden church, the former Grace-Hampden Methodist Episcopal Church at 1014 W. 36th St., which he converted into a coworking hub called Co-Balt Workspace. The developer said he wanted to buy St. Mary’s to find a new purpose for a building that has outlived its previous use. The building was a church from the late 19th century until December 1999, when it closed following years of shrinking membership, according to an online history.
“Our goal is to preserve the chapel for everyone to be able to gather and enjoy,” Mente said.
Golden West, a staple on The Avenue since the late ’90s, had been eyeing a move to the church after the restaurant experienced a steep rent hike. But owner Sam Claassen said she recently came to an agreement with landlords Jeremy Landsman and Kevin Stander to stay in the cafe’s longtime home at 1105 W. 36th St. for at least 7½ more years.
“I was lamenting the idea of leaving,” Claassen said. “I was going to be missing all of the hubbub, all of the hustle and bustle of 36th Street, the impromptu discovery of your restaurant when you’ve got people visiting The Avenue for the first time. I’m really glad that we get to stay.”
Stander and Landsman purchased the Golden West building and neighboring space housing Greek restaurant Souvlaki at auction for $1.94 million in 2021. Before the sale, Claassen and Souvlaki owner Dimitrios Taramas explored raising funds to buy the property themselves.
Claassen said her monthly rent has since increased from $4,000 to about $10,000. The restaurant is also now responsible for paying the building’s property tax and insurance, which adds up to about another $1,000 a month.
She decided to stay after negotiating other terms of the lease. “We got them to take out some major provisions in the lease that made it more digestible for us in the future,” Claassen said, though she declined to offer specifics. Landsman could not immediately be reached for comment.
Claassen said higher rent is part of the overall strain on small businesses like hers, which have also grappled with rising food and labor costs.
“I think that there’s consumer confidence in our restaurant and Hampden as a whole, but it’s challenging when we’re all facing the economic impacts of groceries, of gas, of inflation in general,” she said. “You start to sort of pick and choose where you spend your dollars.”
Some of those dollars will be spent on some improvements to Golden West now that the restaurant has decided to stay put. Claassen said she’s planning to make “small adjustments” to both the building and the menu.
“I’m really excited we’re staying, because now it means we can do all these things that we’ve been putting off, like changing the bar stools,” she said. “The awning’s been driving me crazy, but I didn’t want to buy a new one if we were moving.”