QUENCH
COMMUNITY COCKTAILS Fig adds flair to Brookside Drive by AYN-MONIQUE KLAHRE
T
o hear owner Duane Williams speak of Fig, it’s about way more than cocktails. The jewel box of a bar-cum-coffee shop, nestled into a commercial strip on Brookside Avenue, is part of his grand plan to transform a previously rundown shopping center into the go-to gathering space for an area of downtown that’s exploding with growth. “I used to run through this area, and as I saw more and more cranes to the west, I knew they’d have to come east eventually, what with all these pretty treelines and history,” says Williams, who’s also the commercial developer of the entire lot. He struck up a conversation with the previous owner of the complex, consulted with Louis Cherry Archi-
tecture to give the space a facelift, and started recruiting new businesses to the block. “We had to get the mix right,” he says, “to attract the mamas and babies and strollers and dogs.” He retooled the existing Brookside Market into a familyand dog-friendly pizza spot (recently converted to a Mediterranean place), then recruited a tattoo parlor, retro barber shop, and farm share nonprofit The Produce Project to the strip (with more to come). But all along, the idea for Fig was on the back burner. “We knew we wanted a coffee-cocktail concept, but something that was more grown-up and polished,” says Williams. So he took his time, getting deep into the details of the space: the paint colors, the bamboo bar front, the state-of-the-art espresso machine—even the bathroom
photography by GEOFF WOOD
64 | WALTER
