Café Mesa, the city-owned coffee shop planned for Lions Park near the Donald Dungan Library and the Norma Hartzog Community Center, is a 1,100-square-foot building that will be run by Ally Garvin, owner of Neat Coffee, who was selected in February as the café's first operator.
A Decade of Delays Before the First Cup
The project traces back to plans for Lions Park that date back at least a decade, according to the Los Angeles Times. When the park's final plans were approved in 2017, funding for the café itself was not available, so only a foundation had been built and architectural designs completed at the time.
The buildout was paid for with federal American Rescue Plan Act funding provided through Katrina Foley's office while she was an Orange County supervisor and former mayor. A groundbreaking finally took place in December 2024, with construction on the outdoor café and garden completed by the summer of 2025, according to Johnson Favaro, the project's architecture firm.
Fall 2025 Target Came and Went
City officials had once hoped Café Mesa would be completed in time to serve the public by fall 2025, with the café initially intended to open alongside the library and community center construction. That timeline slipped. As of mid-July 2026, no opening date had surfaced, per a report from The Gipe Group, which noted that unlike other park capital projects, Café Mesa required a food-and-beverage operator to work through its own steps after selection. That same account pointed out that two other capital projects on Costa Mesa parkland, at Ketchum-Libolt Park and TeWinkle Park, were both targeted for completion by late summer 2026.
Garvin's Path From Pop-Up to Lions Park
Garvin has operated Neat Coffee from a Pomona Avenue storefront since 2015, serving Costa Mesans. Neat Coffee also has a second location in Huntington Beach. Café Mesa is expected to offer food and beverages. Garvin has lived in Costa Mesa for 20 years and has a young daughter.
Garvin was selected to operate the café under a proposed three-year service agreement that could be extended for an additional three-year term; the agreement's terms were still being negotiated, according to the Los Angeles Times. Neat Coffee would pay 3% of gross revenues to the city, with half of the total amount collected going to the county's OC Public Libraries for programming.
Former Costa Mesa mayor Katrina Foley has expressed enthusiasm for a local woman-owned small business and the community vision behind Café Mesa. The café project reflects more than a decade of planning for Lions Park.
