To Starbucks, a Closing; To Newark, a Trauma

The green aprons, the blond wood, the safari-themed coffee art and the chalkboards. From Chula Vista, Calif., to Bangor, Me., all Starbucks are more or less the same. And that’s how the company wants it.

But every store, as it turns out, is not quite the same. When a Starbucks opened on Broad Street here almost eight years ago, it was not seen as a bland new spigot of a corporate coffeepot, but as a gathering place whose very existence would have seemed impossible a decade before, a symbol of a knocked-down city’s attempts to get up.

A few miles away, in New York City, new Starbucks branches were sometimes greeted with yawns, or even annoyance that the national chain was invading neighborhoods. In Newark, Sharpe James, then the mayor, showed up for the opening.

So when Starbucks announced last week that the Broad Street branch would be among the 600 stores that the coffee company is closing around the country, the reaction here was especially emotional, a mixture of anger, disappointment and frustration.

“They’re not going to close the one on Wall Street!” one man exclaimed.