By Jeremy M. Lazarus

The Streetcar Café on North Side is back in business under new management.

The coffee shop at 10 E. Brookland Park Blvd. turned on the lights and began serving patrons again Dec. 14, two weeks after the previous operators departed.

The new operator is the Nehemiah Community Development Corp., a nonprofit that bought and renovated the long-vacant building with a $120,000 grant from the city and $30,000 in other donations.

“We’ve got too much invested to give up,” said Derek McDaniels, president of the development corporation.

Mr. McDaniels said Nehemiah would operate the business until another operator is found. The coffee shop is open 7 to 11 a.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays, he said.

The coffee shop closed Nov. 28 after talks broke down between Nehemiah and previous operators Sean and Kirsa Crippen over partnership and lease agreements.

The Crippens opened the coffee shop last July as a for-profit business. They said agreements the nonprofit wanted them to sign would have required them to pay too much to Nehemiah, preventing them from making a profit.

A second business in the building, Streetcar Cyclery, a nonprofit bike sales and repair shop, is still in operation.

The development corporation’s goal is to revitalize the neighborhood retail corridor in and around North Avenue and Brookland Park Boulevard using a private business model.

The first step, Mr. McDaniels said, is to create successful coffee and bike shop operations in this initial building. The goal is to use the revenue from those businesses to buy and renovate other nearby vacant properties and fill them with more shops to create jobs and contribute more revenue to continue the improvement process.