Coffeehouse Planned For Former Health Club: Three Fins Owners Target Summer Opening

CHATHAM – How often do you get the opportunity to relax over a cup of freshly brewed coffee inside a swimming pool?

Seven years after opening Three Fins Coffee Roasters in West Dennis,Catherine Bieri and Ron Reddick have settled on a second location for their popular cafe: the former Chatham Health and Swim Club on Crowell Road. Rather than fill in the pool, they plan to level the sloping bottom and make it a feature of the cafe.

The couple has a lease agreement on the 251 Crowell Rd. property and are making their way through the regulatory process, with an eye toward opening this summer. Along with roasting and brewing their own coffee, they plan to include an espresso bar and bean-to-bar chocolate manufacturing operation.

Although no structural changes to the building are planned, they intend to convert the pool into a seating area, with steps leading down and tables along the upper deck around the pool’s edge.

“I think it will be very unique and interesting,” Bieri said of the feature.

“We’ve been asked for years by customers from Chatham when we were coming to Chatham,” said Reddick. They checked out a number of locations both here and in other towns before settling on the former health club, which has been closed since the pandemic.

The property has been on the market for several years. A proposal in 2021 to knock down the building and create a self-storage facility did not make it past the preliminary review stages with town boards. Last year, at the urging of a number of residents, town officials investigated the site as a possible location for a new council on aging headquarters or ancillary facility, but the building’s condition, its size and the lack of significant parking led the select board to reject it.

Along with customer requests, the search for a new Three Fins location was prompted by the current coffeehouse on Route 28 in West Dennis running out of space. Bags of coffee beans are piled behind the public area of the open space, on shelving and in between coffee roasting equipment. The office is a computer on a metal table nearby. The search has taken more than three years.

“It’s been a challenge,” said Reddick. They first looked at the former health club a year ago, but the 9,700-square-foot floor space seemed like too much space. But the more they searched, he said, the more they felt “this could work.”

The couple, who live in Brewster, previously worked in the wireless technology industry, according to the Three Fins website, and moved to the Cape 12 years ago. Along with Three Fins, they operated coffeehouses in office buildings in Cambridge until the pandemic forced their closure.

Like the West Dennis location, they hope the Chatham coffeehouse can become a “community hub,” a place people can gather for coffee, tea and pastries, and eventually host workshops — perhaps on chocolate making — and entertainment.

“We really want to become a destination,” Reddick said. They view the location being outside downtown Chatham as a plus — many people don’t want to go downtown in the summer, and the site has plenty of parking. The cafe will have 70 seats and 42 parking spaces; the zoning bylaw requires 36 spaces for the cafe and light manufacturing use.

As in West Dennis, they plan to roast their own coffee at the Chatham facility, focusing on “fair trade, small farm and small lot coffees,” according to the website. They sell wholesale as well as retail, with Cape-centric blends such as “Endless Summer” and “Snow Daze.” Coffee and other products, most of them local, will also be sold in Chatham, as they are in West Dennis.

The chocolate manufacturing side of the business will involve converting cocoa beans into bars, and will be done in an area behind a glass wall so the public can view the process. Bieri and Reddick said seven or more full-time jobs will be created between the cafe and coffee roasting and chocolate operations.

Although they have a $1 million three-year lease-to-buy agreement with current owner Nye East Estate Holdings, the couple still has a way to go before the cafe becomes a reality. The planning board approved a site plan on Monday, with most of the concerns raised by board members centering on drainage and runoff. The location sits on a hill above Crowell Road and several other properties which have experienced flooding in the past. A large-scale drainage project along the road a few years ago corrected most of the problems, but board members wanted to be sure that catch basins on the former health club property were functioning properly, requesting that drywells and berms be installed to prevent further flooding.

The project will go before the zoning board of appeals in February for a change of use special permit, and signs and exterior changes must be approved by the historic business district commission.

They also recognize that there’s a significant amount of work to do on the building, both to accommodate their plans and to restore elements that have been left to deteriorate while it has been closed. They are hoping for a summer opening.

“There’s a lot of work we have to do for the space,” Reddick said.