Cafe J — the longtime restaurant and bar across from Texas Tech where martinis flowed and important people pretended they loved Lubbock — officially closed Sunday night after graduation weekend. The property has been sold, the building will be demolished, and the site will become high-density student housing. Because of course it will.
The closure isn’t about failing business. According to current owner Chris Bourne and former owner Ed Price, this was always about redevelopment. Cafe J’s building, which dates back to the 1920s and once served as the original West Texas Hospital, had become too expensive to maintain. Electrical, plumbing, HVAC, fire systems — all outdated, all costly. Saving it would’ve cost more than bulldozing it, so bulldozing it wins. Capitalism remains undefeated.
Cafe J’s roots go back to the late ’70s and early ’80s, when George and Cindy Maher ran the Continental Room atop Metro Tower, with bartender Jay Davis shaping the concept. After bouncing around 19th Street and losing leases, the restaurant settled across from Tech and became “Jay’s,” later Cafe J — a place famous for strong martinis, an older affluent dinner crowd, and a nightly baton pass to Tech students around 10:30 p.m.
Over the decades, Cafe J hosted everyone from legislators to Board of Regents members to touring musicians — basically anyone important enough to want a decent meal before pretending they weren’t going back to their hotel afterward. But none of that matters now. The site is being redeveloped near the Godbold Center into dense student housing, despite objections from the Tech Terrace Neighborhood Association over traffic, parking, and the radical idea that maybe not everything old needs to be vaporized.
Price summed it up politely: change is inevitable. And maybe, someday, Cafe J could return in another form. Which is comforting, in the same way it’s comforting to know your childhood home might live on as a themed Airbnb.
So pour one out for Cafe J — and get ready to memorize another building name that sounds like it was generated by a real estate spreadsheet.