Common Grounds

~by Jeff Tryon

There’s a little place, just around the corner, halfway down the alleyway, where you can find friendly folks, lots of books and collectibles, and most importantly, a good cup of coffee.

The Common Grounds coffee shop, located just off of North Van Buren Street, halfway down Molly’s Lane, is more than just your usual java joint. It is a place where old friends meet and new friends are made over a wide selection of coffee drinks and tea, and a large array of books, art, and collectibles.

At first glance, after you get past the coffee bar up front, the spacious shop looks more like a used bookstore that has collided with a knick-knack shop.

For Iris Gearhart, a lifelong reader and lover of books, Common Grounds isn’t just her business, it is her life. Most days, she is there from seven to seven.

“Day to day, it’s not a job to me, I love being here, love the people,” she said. “I kept telling people after I came to Nashville, ‘You’ve got real people here.’ What you see is what you get.”

Gearhart grew up in Columbus, attended Ivy Tech, and worked for 31 years as a draftsperson.

“I loved what I did, and I had opportunities to move up in the company, but I said no. I didn’t want to do anything else, I liked doing drafting,” Gearhart said. “I would never have thought of doing a coffee shop. My sister dragged me into it.”

Her sister Lita had a vision with grand dreams and was the kind of person who made them come true.

“She said, ‘We’re going to start a coffee shop.’

“I said, ‘We are?’”

Gearhart was still working full-time at architectural drafting and was preparing to retire. She became a silent partner.

In 2005, the sisters opened a coffee kiosk in The Commons Mall in Columbus, which is why the current shop is called “Common Grounds” and also why the proprietary house blend is called “Chaos.” It was named after the giant kinetic sculpture located in the downtown Columbus landmark.

“Chaos is my house blend,” she said. “That is what coffee is supposed to taste like. It’s a small microroaster from Oregon that we’ve been with since day one.

“I’ve got really high standards on my coffee. My sister and my niece went to a cupping in Indy and

tried 30 coffees, and just kept coming back to their basis for this. We’ve had them tweak it. This is our proprietary blend. You can’t get this Chaos anywhere else.”

After Iris was retired for a few months, her sister told her, “You’ve got to come and play too.”

When the mall closed for renovation in 2007, Lita said, “Let’s go to Nashville.”

Having grown up in Columbus, the sisters were very familiar with Nashville. They had visited the town their entire lives and always loved the atmosphere.

“When we were in Columbus, people generally came in, got their coffee, and left,” Gearhart said. “Here, they wanted to hang out.”

So, they scouted around and found the old Colonial Restaurant building empty, opening the shop there in February of 2010.

“We had some coffee and tea merchandise, but nothing like this,” she said. “My sister had been going to yard sales, close-outs, clearances, whatever, for thirty years. She had three storage units full of stuff. She just had the eye for perfect stuff. So, when we moved in here, we just started selling stuff.” Continued on 48

They acquired the inventory of a similar shop that was closing, including fifty boxes of books, for a lump sum. From that beginning, the shop has grown into a delightful jumble of used books, furniture, collectibles, and art.

“People bring me stuff,” she said. “Most everything is for sale. Of course, the things people usually want usually are not. But for the most part, yes.”

The vision was set in place by sister Lita who suffered from crippling rheumatoid arthritis.

“She came in and she said, ‘That color here, that color there, the bar is supposed to look like this’. She had it all planned out in her mind. In less than three months’ time, we had the front part open.”

“The first day open, we didn’t officially have our license yet, so everything was just given out,” Gearhart recalled. “We have a group of friends from Muncie, every year they come down to camp, and there was like, forty of them, and they’re all musical. And they all agreed to come and play music. So, from noon to six that first day they set up here and rotated people playing music.”

And that is pretty much the way the whole enterprise has gone since then—friends gathering and pitching in and enjoying one another’s company.

“Everything about this place, is community,” she said. “I keep saying, I’ve got more blessings than anybody on earth deserves. It’s just dumbfounding sometimes.”

Her sister passed away the summer following their opening in Nashville. Her father passed away about a month ago.

“But I’ve got a bunch of people who have been around me,” she said. “I’ve got good people surrounding me. I’m very well taken care of.”

Common Grounds is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. They are closed Wednesday. They serve coffee, tea, pastry, soup, and cheesy eggs and toast.