Community-backed fundraiser to help Black N Brew relocate is shut down

While East Passyunk Avenue prepares for next month’s Restaurant Week, one of its biggest culinary events of the year, a different talk of the town is buzzing around a single coffee shop in the area.

Black N Brew, a beloved coffee house in the center of South Philadelphia’s main strip of restaurants, bars, and boutiques for the last 17 years, will shut its doors in February, the owners Jennifer and Colleen DeCesare announced on social media earlier this month. They said their landlord, Passyunk Avenue Revitalization Corporation (PARC), chose not to renew their lease with two months’ notice.

The closure announcement spurred an outcry on social media from customers and neighbors confused about how such a celebrated fixture of the avenue, known for hosting donation and fundraising efforts around issues like youth food insecurity and domestic violence, would be thrown out of the building on such short notice.

“This is terrible! Like why?? I love having you on our corner. And everyone loves you on the avenue,” wrote one user under the announcement post.

Local community members and supporters of the coffee house scrambled to set up a GoFundMe page for Black N Brew’s future relocation efforts the next day, which, at the time of publishing, raised more than $7,000 towards its $10,000 goal.

“B&B is the heart of Passyunk Avenue,” wrote someone who donated to the GoFundMe. “We sure hope a new location can be found.”

However, a little more than a week after it was created, the organizers shut down the online fundraising effort.

“In light of recent events, it is best to close this fundraiser and refund all donations back to the original donors,” stated the Saturday update on the GoFundMe page, noting refunds would be issued within the week.

The day before the fundraiser’s end, The Inquirer reported that the owners owe tens of thousands of dollars in state taxes, interest, and fines dating back to 2018 up to last month. Jennifer DeCesare told The Inquirer that the unpaid taxes “are a separate issue and have nothing to do with making our monthly rent payment. We have been in an active payment agreement with the state.”

PARC cites the reasoning for not renewing Black N Brew’s lease as the DeCesares’ failure to pay back rent and utility bills that had not been repaid since the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic when the revitalization nonprofit provided the coffee house with discounted rent and utility waivers. After years of negotiations, including two one-year lease extensions, PARC decided to not renew the coffee house’s lease in February, PARC’s executive director Alex Balloon told The Inquirer last week.

The DeCesares say they paid back PARC in full, but that a case of identity theft led the owners to mistakenly send out personal checks from Colleen’s account, which the DeCesares say may have been missed by PARC, reported Billy Penn. Since this debacle began last month, the DeCesares have told other media outlets they tried to resolve this issue directly with PARC to no avail.