Window created by Ella Thompson and Shelley Rohlf.

“I consider the Black Dog my art work.” – Sara Remke Everyone’s favorite neighborhood has that great little bar, coffee shop or restaurant that feels comfortable and warm but also promises surprises and discovery of new things. In Lowertown St. Paul, that place is on the corner of Fourth and Broadway, and it’s called the Black Dog Coffee and Wine Bar. But becoming an important and creative space in the community wasn’t as simple as just opening the doors.

The Black Dog recently celebrated its 15th anniversary, having opened its doors in early 1998. Conceived by siblings and co-owners Sara, Stacy and Andy Remke as a simple coffee and wine bar with a focus on affordable wines, craft beers and homemade salads and sandwiches, the Black Dog has become something much more by inviting artists to use their space. It has become a place of creation, connectivity and community building. Walk in any night of the week and you’re likely to see muralist Ta-coumba Aiken guest performing with the band Pocket of Resistance, Orkestar Bez Ime performing Balkan party music, or hear Lisa Brimmer performing poetry on a bed of jazz with her group High Society.

The Black Dog is this great mix of seeming completely improvised in every way, while also feeling completely intentionally in where things are and how things work. It was about six months after opening their doors when co-owner Sara Remke’s partner Jean Rochard pointed out that the Black Dog could be a space for live music as well as food and drink. The early concerts featured mostly French musicians because Rochard had many relationships created through his work as a producer and founder of the French record label Nato. The Black Dog began hosting the French and American music festival Minnesota sur Seine in 2004.

Art fueled by coffee.

The more Remke invited people to play on the Black Dog’s stage, the more other artists started reaching out and asking for stage time of their own. After many years of building audience and supporting local artists, Remke says they started to be viewed as a desirable venue for bands, poets and spoken word artists. And their walls have long served as a place showcase local visual artists, with new art being put up every month. And having art and performance did more than add to the aesthetics of the restaurant–it drove business.

The way that the Black Dog has grown its relationship with audiences and customers mirrors the growth of Lowertown more broadly. According to Remke, that’s by design. “This neighborhood was a ghost town when we came here,” she says. The involvement in fostering relationships with artists and community building in Lowertown is viewed by Remke as smart from a business point of view, but it’s also what keeps the work of owning and operating a business vibrant and creatively challenging.

While the visual art on the walls is always up, for many years the Black Dog only hosted concerts and performances on weekends. When construction for the Central Corridor light-rail line began as early as 2009, Remke and her siblings knew they needed to do something to encourage business because parking or even getting to the front door of the Black Dog was becoming a near impossibility. Remke remembers thinking, “We have to do something to bring people here.” So they started booking acts to perform every night. “All of a sudden our performance nights were doing better than our days, and that really surprised us. We had to use every bit of creativity we had to make it through the construction. It’s a really nice feeling to realize that you navigated that and figured it all out. And came up with crazy ideas.”

A paper mache Black Dog.

Since the Green Line train opened in June, construction for the light-rail line has wrapped up. But before the train was even complete, construction was underway right next door to the Black Dog for the new Lowertown ballpark that will house the St. Paul Saints. The success of nightly entertainment programming means that construction or not, you can continue to count on finding something entertaining happening on the Black Dog stage most nights of the week. And Remke is cautiously optimistic about what the increased traffic that comes with a new baseball stadium will mean for small businesses and organizations in Lowertown. “I’m very excited about new energy coming in. It’s still a very delicate ecosystem. But, it can’t be a bad thing to have 5,000 more people down here,” she says.

Black Dog Coffee & Wine Bar: 308 Prince St., St Paul; blackdogstpaul.com