Coffee Oasis eyes new Port Orchard location

A familiar location has closed, but Coffee Oasis’ administration has no plans to abandon Port Orchard’s need for the bean and youth services.

Coffee Oasis administrative assistant Christen Harlow said they are looking to reopen in the area.

“It could be next month or whenever,” she said. “We’re hoping it’s just a temporary thing.”

Coffee Oasis was located on Bethel Avenue, when director of business development Curtis Zulauf took over the space that formerly housed Solid Rock Café, and gave the establishment a new identity. Former owner Roxanne Harper stayed on to work for him.

Harlow said Coffee Oasis officials now are looking “for a place to have a coffee house and a youth center.”

“The location where we were before wasn’t conducive,” she said. “As we were expanding with youth, the space was more limited.”

Zulauf, who is out of town at an administrative retreat, previously told the Independent that Coffee Oasis is an important endeavor to him. As a teenager, Zulauf said he became a drug dealer and alcoholic.

He said Coffee Oasis helps him reach out to the same sort of troubled youths with which he once identified.

It’s something he has been working toward since he became a Christian three and a half years ago and started volunteering with Hope in Christ Ministries and later managing the Coffee Oasis on Burwell Street in Bremerton

Former Bremerton Police Department chaplain Dave Frederick started the nonprofit Hope in Christ Ministries in 1997 on Warren Avenue in Bremerton.

It moved into its current location at 822 Burwell St. in 1999, where it aims to reach the homeless and youth.

Zulauf later started volunteering with Hope in Christ Ministries and later managing the Coffee Oasis on Burwell Street in Bremerton.

“It kind of lights the fire in me,” he told the Independent in 2010. “I know the desperation and the despair kids feel when they’re in that. People aren’t doing drugs because they’re happy.”

Contact Port Orchard Independent Staff Writer Chris Chancellor at cchancellor@portorchardindependent.com or (360) 876-4414.

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