Coffee is flowing again at La Colombe's Uline cafe in NoMa, the small coffeehouse tucked beside REI's flagship store, which reopened Sunday after a closure tied to building repairs. The cafe is running on reduced hours for now, with no firm date yet for a return to its normal schedule.
News of the reopening was first reported by PoPville, which noted that the closure was related to the building replacing a sub pump. The outlet's post quoted La Colombe's own announcement: “Our Uline cafe will reopen on Sunday, Oct. 18.” For now, the shop is open Monday through Friday from 6:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., according to the same report.
Those hours are a temporary scale-back rather than a permanent change. La Colombe told readers it hopes to get back to normal as soon as possible, writing, “We plan (to) resume regular hours as soon as possible,” per the PoPville post. No timeline was given for when that might happen.
A Small Cafe Inside a Big-Box Flagship
The Uline cafe sits inside what REI calls its Washington, D.C. flagship, a 51,000-square-foot store in the NoMa neighborhood, according to REI. The retailer's own materials describe the coffee shop as a compact, 1,052-square-foot space built into the larger store. It is a modest footprint for a cafe that has become something of a neighborhood fixture for coffee drinkers passing through the historic building.
The pairing of REI and La Colombe at this site is not new. Back in 2016, the location was already being described as the future home of Washington, D.C.'s first REI store alongside a new La Colombe cafe, according to a report from dc.curbed.com at the time. That decade-old framing underscores how long the two retailers have shared the space, even as the cafe's hours have fluctuated more recently.
What's Still Unclear
Several details about the closure remain unconfirmed. It is not clear exactly how long the cafe was shut down, and there is no confirmed date yet for when regular hours will resume. The explanation that the closure stemmed from the building swapping out a sub pump has not been independently verified beyond the original PoPville report, and the cafe's current hours and reopening were not confirmed through a direct statement from La Colombe or an updated hours listing on its official cafe page.
For now, NoMa coffee drinkers headed to REI's flagship can count on a shorter window to grab a cup — just not a full day's worth of hours, at least not yet.
