What us, worry?

When INDABA calls itself “West Central’s Neighborhood Coffee Shop,” it isn’t being presumptuous.

On your mental map of Spokane, shade in the area from the river north to Indiana, and from Monroe west to the bluffs overlooking Riverside State Park. Now fill in the coffee shops. See what we mean? Indaba, which opened in November, is the only one.

With the exception of Common Grounds, a kiosk with a few seats, on the neighborhood’s outskirts, you can’t have a chat at any of the drive-thru coffee joints along the Monroe or Maple/Ash.

In the heart of West Central, there’s nothing like Indaba. And that’s a good thing for a neighborhood that has long struggled to be more than a collection of beautiful, run-down old houses.

But we worry.

Because the coffee is good (shots pulled from Newman Lake’s boutique roaster Bumper Crop) and about 25 cents cheaper than the going rate for a latte. The sandwiches (like Mark’s Horseradish Beef, which was creamy and spicy but not too much of either) from Katie’s Table, which shares the space with Indaba, are good too and similarly cheap ($5-$6.75).

We worry most of all because West Central still doesn’t quite feel whole, or like it has a focal point that isn’t the mercurial there-by-day-gone-by-5-pm courthouse crowd.

And that’s why, though we worry, Indaba gives us hope.

The area around Broadway and Walnut, where Indaba sits in a new three-story building that also houses low-income apartments, feels like it could be that focal point. Especially if more new buildings like Indaba’s were to work themselves in among the low-slung old storefronts and wind-blown Victorians.

The space is cute and small enough to be cozy. We’d turn off the fluorescent lights and add some floor lamps and maybe a couch for ambience, but these are small things. It’s the kind of joint where we can imagine young families spending a Sunday morning.

Manager Abe Henderson says people have done just that, the coffee house’s clientele thus far being a mix of “courthouse traffic and strollers coming down from the neighborhood.”

It’s quite a gambit, this whole thing, and you can tell what the payoff would be for the owners. The most curious pieces of décor in the place are artist’s renderings of Greenstone Homes’ plans for Kendall Yards, the massive development planned between Bridge Street and the river, just two blocks from Indaba.

If the long-delayed development actually happens, it’d be a boon for the neighborhood and its new coffee shop. — LUKE BAUMGARTEN

Indaba Coffee, 1804 W. Broadway Ave., is open weekdays 7 am-7 pm and weekends 7 am-4 pm. Call 328-6527.