Decor Dispute a Bitter Brew : Retail: Triangle Square calls the soon-to-close coffee store’s ‘recycled’ look unauthorized. The shop owner says mall operators object to ‘soul.’

When Jill Kitches moved to Newport Beach from Tucson recently to look for work, she found a comfortable spot to sip coffee and fill out job applications--a table at Alta Coffeehouse & Roasting Co.’s year-old store at Triangle Square.

“On the outside it looks like your typical, cold mall building,” said Kitches, who once worked at a small coffee shop in Arizona. “But inside it’s a nice, comfortable shop. I even thought of asking for a job.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Kitches was sipping coffee and filling out yet another application. But she’s crossed Alta off of her list of possible employers because the popular shop is closing its doors this weekend, the victim of a bitter dispute between store owners and the mall’s operators.

Triangle Square managers said Wednesday that Alta’s owners will vacate the building by Wednesday and that several other operators are interested in opening a new coffee shop in Alta’s space. Store owners contend that the multilevel mall hasn’t attracted the type and number of shops needed to generate enough foot traffic for the coffee shop to turn a profit.

Regardless of what prompted the dispute, Kitches says she will miss Alta’s tasty coffee, friendly staff--as well as the eclectic design elements that apparently drove a wedge between Triangle Square and Alta.

Mall manager Lars Anderson said Wednesday that Alta co-owner Patty Spooner made substantial architectural changes after the store’s design was approved. “What they did looks completely different from what was submitted,” Anderson said. “They did it without discussion.”

Not so, maintains Spooner, who said mall officials knew perfectly well that the shop’s design would differ dramatically from the cool, polished look of Niketown, Virgin Megastore, Sfuzzi and other Triangle Square retailers.

In a letter sent recently to mall executives and distributed to customers, Spooner complained that “when we started moving in and showing our ‘soul,’ you and your partners vehemently protested our design and our philosophy.”

*

Alta’s neighbors revel in their high-tech, polished digs, but the coffee shop’s owners are more at home with recycled fixtures.

Spooner says she found Alta’s bathroom doors at a Goodwill store, and the shop’s wooden floor was stripped from an abandoned house in Newport Beach. The bookcase that divides the shop was saved from another house that was slated for demolition. Most of the shop’s kitchen equipment was acquired at auction.

“The whole place is made of recycled materials,” Spooner said. “It’s all up to code, and when we finished it, we did a great job. But we didn’t conform to their corporate style.”

Spooner argues that the mall has been trying to dump the coffee shop for months because of the design disagreement. She also faults the mall for not fulfilling promises made in 1993 about the volume of foot traffic that would be passing by the shop’s front door.

Spooner admits, though, that she “was probably stupid” for signing a lease that she now believes is costlier than any other lease at Triangle Square. In the letter distributed to customers, she writes that “we were naive, we didn’t think to judge the quality of customer base on their average dollar spent; we judged on smiles returned.”

Spooner, who also owns a wholesale coffee distribution company, said she can’t afford to reopen elsewhere immediately. She also said that mall managers won’t let her recoup losses by selling the Triangle Square operation to an interested buyer.

She faults the mall for refusing to negotiate a new deal.

“This isn’t how it’s supposed to be,” said Spooner, who has about 20 employees at the shop. “We started out here before Nike and before Virgin. We’ve been paying rent until recently. But when we said we needed to talk, they would have nothing to do with us.”