Take Five Coffee + Bar takes a giant step

When I arrive to meet Take Five Coffee + Bar co-owner Lori Chandler at her venue’s brand-new space at Corbin Park, plush red-leather chairs have just been delivered. They’re sumptuous things, deeper than they look — once you’ve burrowed into one, you’re reluctant to rise from it. Chandler is delighted by them. She pushes the chairs to the front of the platform stage, arranging and rearranging them like a kid trying out a toy.

Chandler has good reason to be excited. The new Take Five space, located at the once-stalled shopping development at 135th Street and Metcalf, is double the size of its original location, at a strip mall at 151st St. and Nall.

And there are other big changes: The old location seated 32; this space holds 80. There’s also a full kitchen, so Chandler and her husband and co-owner, Doug Chandler, envision an expanded menu (including Sunday brunch, which kicks off November 2). And then there’s the stage. At 26 feet across, defined by stacked stone that surrounds a house piano and drum kit and visible from any seat in the room, the stage is the new Take Five’s visual signature.

On this weekday, Chandler is deploying her own nervous energy to navigate deliveries and last-minute construction. Opening night is near, and she’s aware of all that’s at stake.

“When I first walked through this space, it was so huge,” she tells me. “I was terrified.” There’s pride in her voice, mixed with the trepidation that comes with growing a small coffee shop into a serious music venue. This wasn’t the plan. In fact, the move practically dropped out of the sky.

“I got an e-mail from [the developers behind] Corbin Park last year, and I almost laughed it off,” Chandler says, smiling at the memory. “But the decision was made very easy because Corbin Park demonstrated that they really wanted us to be in the mix of the shopping center. This area is trying to create an entertainment district of sorts, in south Johnson County, which has been sorely lacking. And they made it easy for us to move in. We signed the lease in December last year.”

Chandler says the move, though unexpected, makes sense.

“Opening with this concept to begin with, in a tiny strip mall in a largely residential area, was even riskier in a lot of ways [than this relocation],” Chandler says of the first Take Five, which opened in 2010. “The center that we were in, that we moved from, we were open the most hours — we were the anchor tenant, and that was a bigger risk than moving to a more popular center with other business to drive traffic. Yes, right now, there are only a couple stores open, and some days it’s terrifying, but now that we’re in and we’ve had the doors open, with little advertising, already our traffic has been increasing. It’s a well-calculated risk.”

The idea for the new Take Five space is that it will continue to build on a reputation established over the past four years. There’s a demand in the suburbs, Chandler says, for what Take Five is doing. Weekends at the old venue drew a wall-to-wall clutch of jazz fans eager to rediscover Kansas City’s musical history. Chandler feels an obligation to that tradition.

“When we first hosted jazz, I fell in love with the community,” Chandler says. “They [the musicians] are the nicest people. They’re so easy to work with and so good. I feel like it’s a piece of KC’s heritage that has kind of fallen away over the last couple years, and it has to be supported — that has to be done. And they make it really easy for me to take that chance.”

Local jazz bassist Jeff Harshbarger says the vibe cultivated at the former Take Five location had become all too rare around here.

“The old space was our living room,” Harshbarger says. “It was the spot where all the jazz musicians in town felt the most comfortable to do whatever they wanted to do. There was no pressure to do a certain kind of material or pander to anyone. It was the spot where we could play whatever we wanted to play, and we could do that because Lori and Doug loved it and loved musicians.”

He’s not exaggerating the Chandlers’ affection for the players. Lori Chandler recalls the first time that local star quartet Interstring played at Take Five.

“We put 70 people in that tiny shop on a Monday night with a $10 cover, and you could hear a pin drop for the entirety of that performance,” she says. “It took my breath away. That’s what makes the daily struggle of running this business worth it for me, because you know that everyone in the room gets to experience something special that they can’t get anywhere else.”

“It’s not just a business for them, it’s their lives,” Harshbarger says. “That’s why we’re all so comfortable driving all the way out there to do our thing.”