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Former Empire Coffee Cafe To Reopen Under New Name

Kacey Gardner
/
NSPR
The historic railway coach reconfigured into a steel-wheeled café, owned by the Chico Art Center and formerly operated as Empire Coffee, is set to open Monday under a new name."

After a brief respite on a proverbial siding, it’s once again “all aboard” at the historic railway coach reconfigured into a steel-wheeled café in Chico.

The car was set to reopen at 7 Monday morning, following an acrimonious dispute between the car’s owner — a local arts group — and the former operator.

Housed in a post-war Pullman coach that spent decades rolling between Chicago and Seattle as part of the Great Northern Railway’s "Empire Builder" route, the café has been renamed Great Northern.

Debra Simpson is office manager at the Chico Art Center. The Art Center owns and will more directly operate the café and plans to broaden its offerings in the medium term. Hoping to make customers out of those waiting for Greyhound and Amtrak buses. Trains stop only in the wee hours.

For now, what’s available isn’t much of a departure from what regulars expect.

“Specialty coffees, chocolates, nice teas, some snacky items for our traveling friends, and putting up some new artwork on the wall,” Simpson said.

Simpson said signage publicizing the new name will appear shortly. Day-to-day management is being entrusted to a new manager who has been associated with the café since its launch in 2007.  

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