'I cried every day': Montpelier coffee shop renovates, suffers flooding, reopens again

This profile of Capitol Grounds Café is the latest in a series by the Burlington Free Press on Montpelier restaurants as they reopen following flooding that devastated Vermont’s capital city in July. What has the experience been like? What does the future hold?

MONTPELIER ― A long-running coffee shop completed a significant renovation a few months before floods hit the capital city in July. Then the owners shut the place down and renovated it all over again, for the second time in 2023.

What happened during the flooding?

Capitol Grounds Café owner Julia Watson came in at 4 a.m. Monday, July 10, to bake. It was already raining. At 7 a.m., a longtime employee reported that her backyard was under water and she wanted to stay home.

“I think that this is getting serious,” Watson said the employee told her. The river was rising but the basement at the coffee shop, which sits on State Street just above the North Branch of the Winooski River, was dry.

At about 10 a.m., the basement had about two feet of water. Watson asked employees how they felt. Most wanted to go home. Capitol Grounds closed by noon.

Watson and a few employees were closing up at 1 p.m., moving cups, food and other items higher off the floor. Watson bought the last two sandbags at Aubuchon Hardware on Main Street. A friend of her husband provided another 50 that they stationed in front of Capitol Grounds as well as a vintage clothing store and an antiques shop they own nearby.

“We were, like, blindsided,” Watson said.

By 5 p.m., scrap wood and tools from the renovation Capitol Grounds had just completed in March were floating in about four feet of water in the basement. Watson waded into the chest-high water and moved tools to the upstairs dining room.

She and her husband hosted other downtown business owners for dinner that night at their East Montpelier home. They all wondered what would happen to their shops and restaurants. The guests left, but Watson couldn’t sleep. She watched video feeds from cameras inside the café and could see there was no water on the main floor.

By 6:30 a.m. the next day, Watson could see from video footage that up to a foot of water had reached the main floor, where customers typically sip coffee and munch on baked goods. She came into Montpelier at 8 a.m. and heard alarms going off in buildings throughout downtown. She smelled gas and propane. People were walking in flood waters filled with gas, oil and excrement.

“I was like, I need to see it,’” Watson said. She made her way to her shop. The water had receded from Capitol Grounds and everything was muddy, but she thought she’d clean it up and the business would be ready to reopen in a couple of days.

How has the recovery gone?

Word filtered through town about how filthy the floodwater – and therefore the businesses hit by the floodwater – really was. Watson knew she’d have to get down to business.

“We decided to use it as an opportunity,” she said. Though Capitol Grounds had just been renovated four months earlier, Watson faced a new set of upgrades, including having to replace cabinets, freezers, walk-in coolers and refrigerators.

“I think for the first three days I had so much adrenaline,” Watson said, so she was able to soldier on. She said she’s a positive person; she was buoyed by the sense that as bad as the flooding was, everyone in town was pulling together to start the recovery.

At times, her positive feelings wore down.

“I cried every day,” Watson said, “and not just for me and my business but for everybody.”

As other businesses reopened before Capitol Grounds could join them, Watson’s darker feelings took root.

“That was extremely frustrating, this push and pull and tug of war with my emotions,” she said. “I wanted to be happy for everyone, but it was also ‘poor me.’”

Capitol Grounds Café reopened Nov. 3. Customers found a place much different from the one they saw in early 2023, and even from the March renovation. The half-wall dividing the dining room is gone, allowing for better flow and light from the street-side windows. The counter where customers serve their own drip coffees has been relocated, as has the main counter itself, which was pushed back a few feet to give patrons more room to stand in line. The tile floor has been replaced by waterproof vinyl flooring.

What does the future hold?

Watson’s father, Bob Watson, was an original co-owner of Capitol Grounds, who helped open the café on Nov. 12, 1998. Julia Watson remembers standing on a milk crate to wait on customers in the early days of the business, which she and her husband took over on New Year’s Day in 2020.

They renovated the business then, but soon had to shut down for a few days because of the COVID-19 pandemic, when they thrived on home deliveries of their packaged brand, 802 Coffee. They shut down for part of February and March of 2023 for the latest renovation.

“Now we’re set,” Watson remembers thinking four months before the July floods. “Obviously, we changed everything again.”

Capitol Grounds is a huge part of Watson’s family legacy. She wants to preserve the business, and by association, the flood-prone downtown neighborhood it has occupied for a quarter century.

“We live in a flood state,” Watson said, adding that the state should provide a book outlining steps on what property owners need to do in case of flooding. She hopes experts will address improved floodplains along the Winooski River and better channeling so the river doesn’t overflow its banks so much.

Watson has listened to suggestions at meetings about long-term solutions. Some proposals, she said, are “ridiculous,” including moving downtown to a higher location.

“That’s literally what makes our town, is being on the river,” Watson said. “It’s a beautiful river to look at.”

Hours and information

Capitol Grounds Café, 27 State St., Montpelier. 6:15 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday-Friday; 7 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday; 7 a.m.-noon Sunday. (802) 223-7800, www.capitolgrounds.com

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com.

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Capitol Grounds Cafe in Montpelier VT renovates again after floods