Photo by yospyn.

In case you missed it in yesterday’s Go Home Already, news broke late last night that 14th Street coffee shop Mid City Caffe will be closing its doors on October 1. The shop opened in 2009.

Despite its reputation as a base camp of sorts for the freelance set, manager Jeffrey Lamoureux explains that the business, located in the second-floor walk-up above Miss Pixie’s Furnishings and Whatnot, was just not attracting enough foot traffic.

“[U]ltimately the volume simply was not there,” wrote Lamoureux in a statement, which is reprinted in full at the bottom of this post.

The good news? Lamoureux’s statement says that the shop’s “ownership and staff are excited to move on to other opportunities,” which includes helming a coffee concept inside the AKA White House hotel at 17th and H Streets NW.

The final day of normal operation will be September 30, 2011 with limited hours of operation on October 1. The café was opened in 2009 by a pair of entrepreneurs who turned the interior of the former auto-body shop into a comfortable environment for the neighborhood’s residents to work, relax and socialize.

Unfortunately, the second-story location outside the downtown core proved underperforming. Limited accessibility restricted morning commuter and daytime foot-traffic, and while the café was blessed with a coterie of dedicated regulars, ultimately the volume simply was not there.

Known particularly as a gathering place for the neighborhood’s freelancers and creative professionals, Mid City Caffe proudly served coffee from Counter Culture

Coffee and Caffe Pronto prepared by an expertly trained staff. The café’s closing will leave a gap in the expanding, but nightlife-focused, Fourteenth Street corridor.

It has been a pleasure to serve the Logan Circle neighborhood and to be apart of the city’s burgeoning specialty coffee scene. While the ownership and staff are excited to move on to other opportunities, they will miss their devoted customers.