A New Mexico native, Marie Coleman grew up in the small town of Cuba. She comes from a long line of strong women business owners, including her mother, Rita Casaus Coleman, and her aunt, Reigna Jaramillo, who formed the backbone of her business support system. Food is the family business. Her family owned several grocery stores and restaurants in Cuba and her brother owns a restaurant and bar in Albuquerque. But she never dreamed running a restaurant was in the cards for her.

“My Aunt Reigna asked me once if I wanted to do a restaurant and I told her no,” she says with a laugh. “So, be careful, because you never know what you’re going to end up doing. I worked for my aunt as a waitress to
make money in high school. It definitely was not something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. But I fell in love with this old house. That’s how I got stuck.”

Fifteen years ago, she stumbled onto the old building during a break from her x-ray technology studies at UNM. On a whim, she went to Old Town. “When I walked down Church St., I saw this old adobe building that
was literally melting into the ground. The lady who owned it had just passed away, and it was for sale. I looked through the window, and thought, I would love to redo this building.”

Common sense prevailed at first. “I was still in school, but I started talking to my mother about it. She said, ‘Why don’t you go see it and find out how much they want for it?’ I didn’t think it was practical at the time, but she said ‘Oh, you never know; just go look.’

Marie arranged to see the property, but her first impressions weren’t encouraging.“When we walked in, there were spider webs and dust everywhere. The ceiling was propped up with two-by-fours. The Realtor
told me what they wanted for it and I thought,‘No way.’”

When she described the house’s complete disrepair, her mother encouraged her to make an offer anyway. Marie submitted what she considered to be a “ridiculous offer,” then was stunned when the Realtor called and said, “You just bought an old house.”

She immediately started to worry how she would pay for it. When her aunt finally saw the place, Marie said, “She got angry at me. She really let me have it, saying ‘Are you out of your mind? This place is a dump!’”

Finding a contractor willing to take on the work wasn’t easy. Everyone advised her to level the house and start over, but that wasn’t Marie’s vision. Her mother suggested she contact Charlie Trujillo, a family friend and contractor.

When she showed Charlie the property, Marie recalls, “He walked through it and he didn’t say a word to me. Not one word. He was a little Mexican man with a hat pulled down low over his eyes. He walked out to the back and said to me, ‘How bad do you want this?’”

“I really like it and want to restore it,” she told him. “He said, ‘Okay, this is the deal. You show up every morning at 8 o’clock. I’ll show you what you need to do, and who you need to call that day.’

“I showed up at 8 o’clock every morning, and he’d have a list for me. Never on a piece of paper—always on a piece of wood or sheet rock or some kind of scrap—and he’d tell me, ‘Bring that back to me. I have use for that.’ At the lumber yards, they probably thought I couldn’t even afford paper. He told me, ‘If you get it wrong, I’ll send you back.’”

But Marie learned quickly and he only had to send her back once-over some bowed two-by-fours. After finishing the construction, Marie fell in love with her new building, but it was her aunt who spotted the building’s true potential. “When she walked through it, she told me, ‘This is a restaurant.’”

Marie decided not to argue with her. Though she graduated from UNM, she never became an x-ray tech. Instead, with her aunt’s experienced help, she opened the Church St. Café in 1993.

She used the restaurant to showcase her love of history. During the renovation, work crews discovered all sorts of artifacts, such as bones, bottles, valentine cards, a baby shoe, and old newspapers. To display these items, Marie embedded an original window from the house in one of the café’s dining rooms.

Whenever possible, she reused the old house’s materials in new ways, retaining the original ceiling beams in some rooms and building new bathroom stalls with recycled wood. Old-fashioned family portraits from her personal history line the walls. Part of the original terrones (an old type of adobe bricks) have been exposed on the spacious patio to reveal the true age of the building.

“I wanted the space to be functional, but not too perfect,” Marie explains in discussing the intimate feel of the café.

Being a restaurateur comes with its challenges. When she first opened her café, it took six years to obtain a beer and wine license because of zoning laws surrounding her proximity to the church. She treats her employees like a family, acting as “the mom” whenever tempers flare. It’s a management strategy that works—one of the original waiters from 15 years ago is still on her staff.

Now, Marie can’t imagine spending her life any other way. She enjoys being in the heart of historic Old Town and is dedicated to helping the area prosper. She is a member of the Old Town Merchants’ Association, a group working to bring more events, such as concerts, to the plaza in order to attract local residents, not just tourists, to Old Town.

Marie was also appointed to be a commissioner to the Landmarks and Urban Conservation Commission, which approves alterations to the city’s historic buildings. She sits on the board of the Albuquerque Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Today, she watches her son, Joe, a college student in Houston, struggle to find a direction for his life. Joe was 9 when the Church St. Café opened, and Marie fondly recalls when he used to race through the rooms on his in-line skates. Just as she did, Joe grew up in the family business and worked as a waiter and a night manager for the café. Perhaps, he too, will find a permanent professional home on Church St. someday.

Darcy Burnside is an experienced business and technical writer living in Albuquerque. She specializes in sales proposals, newsletters and marketing collateral and can be reached at db2b7727@comcast.net.