ANNAPOLIS, Md. Bitty & Beau’s Coffee will pour its last cup on Dock Street next month, and the way the closure is unfolding says almost as much as the closure itself.
Eye On Annapolis first reported this week, citing information from employees at the shop, that the popular coffee house at 124 Dock Street would shut down September 13. A company spokesperson then confirmed the closure to CBS News Baltimore, but gave a slightly different last day, September 14, and a different reason: the shop’s seven-year lease is running out. The company’s statement did not mention the years of construction that have reshaped the block outside its front door.
That distinction matters, and MDBayNews isn’t going to blur it. It also doesn’t erase what’s happening on this specific block, where two neighboring businesses have already gone dark since spring.
Here is what has happened on this one block of Dock Street since the spring:
Annapolis Marine Art Gallery, at 110 Dock Street since 1978, announced in May it will close its physical storefront by the end of 2026 and move to an online-only business. Co-owner Samantha Wilkerson has said revenue is down more than 70 percent from pre-construction levels.
Blowfish Poké Hawaiian Grill, which opened next door to Bitty & Beau’s at 122 Dock Street in 2024, cut its hours because of slow traffic earlier this year and later suspended operations with no announced reopening date.
Bitty & Beau’s Coffee, at 124 Dock Street, is now set to close in September, citing the end of its lease.
“Not every business points to the same cause, and MDBayNews isn’t going to pretend they do.”
Not every business points to the same cause, and MDBayNews isn’t going to pretend they do. All three of these storefronts, though, sit within about 15 doors of each other, on a block that has been fenced off and short on street parking since the city’s construction schedule moved into its current phase. Storm Bros. Ice Cream Factory, also on this stretch, hasn’t closed, but its owner, Sveinn Storm, says the shop lost roughly $98,000 in sales during the first year of the current construction project and was already another $98,000 behind that reduced pace by the middle of this July.
It’s also worth separating this from a different story that got folded into some of the same coverage. O’Leary’s Seafood Restaurant, a longtime Eastport institution across Spa Creek from City Dock, also closed this summer, and its owner cited a lost lease. O’Leary’s is not on Dock Street and has no apparent connection to the construction project. It shows up in some recent Annapolis closure roundups anyway, which is a reminder to read pattern stories carefully rather than assume every closure downtown shares one cause.
The City Dock Resiliency and Revitalization Project is an estimated $88 million to $90 million effort to rebuild the waterfront so it can withstand rising water, with the figure climbing slightly between the city’s November 2025 groundbreaking and more recent reporting. City officials say the case for doing it is not close. Annapolis recorded 120 flood events in 2024 alone, double the previous record, according to a city press release announcing $35.5 million in FEMA hazard mitigation funding this March. Tropical Storm Debby pushed water 4.4 feet above normal levels in 2024, and downtown has flooded on a near-routine basis in the years since.
Construction officially broke ground on November 3, 2025, following years of planning, though the city says preliminary site work began that fall. The current phase, running from January 2026 through May 2027, closes lower Dock Street between Craig Street and Susan Campbell Park and partially closes upper Dock Street between Craig and Randall Streets. A second phase would close the rest of upper Dock Street from May 2027 through March 2028, when the project is currently scheduled to wrap.
The city says it has tried to soften the blow. It added 165 parking spaces at the nearby Mills-Hillman Garage, bringing that garage to 590 total spaces. It extended its free Magenta Shuttle route to Dock Street this year. It has put up banners and signage and paid for transit and social media ads pointing people toward businesses hidden behind the fencing.
“These changes will absolutely be inconvenient, but they are necessary,” Mayor Jared Littmann told the City Council in January.
Business owners along the block don’t dispute the flooding problem. Several, including Wilkerson, initially supported the project. What they dispute is whether the city’s mitigation for them has matched the disruption it created.
“Small businesses can’t afford to lose so much foot traffic and parking,” Wilkerson told The Baltimore Banner earlier this month.
A lawsuit from the preservation nonprofit Historic Annapolis, along with a separate suit from an anonymous plaintiff, sought to slow the project down. A judge dismissed the Historic Annapolis case in September 2025, though the group said at the time it might appeal. A separate lawsuit came from a restaurant owner who accused the city of creating a construction-related nuisance.
Bitty & Beau’s is not a typical coffee shop, and that’s the part of this story that shouldn’t get lost in a list of storefronts. The chain was founded in 2016 in Wilmington, North Carolina, by Amy and Ben Wright, who named it after their two youngest children, both of whom have Down syndrome. The company’s stated philosophy is that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are fully capable employees who simply haven’t been given the chance: “everyone is employable, everyone is capable,” according to the founders.
Nationally, Bitty & Beau’s says it employs more than 450 people with disabilities across its locations. The Annapolis shop opened in February 2020 as one of the chain’s earliest sites and has served customers on Dock Street for more than six years.
That kind of job is harder to replace than a typical retail or food-service position, and the numbers explain why.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent annual report, released in March, only 22.8 percent of people with disabilities were employed in 2025, compared with 65.2 percent of people without disabilities. The unemployment rate for people with a disability was 8.3 percent, roughly double the 4.1 percent rate for people without one. Separate monthly tracking from the Kessler Foundation and the University of New Hampshire found the labor force participation rate for working-age people with disabilities sitting at 41.8 percent in June, versus 78.2 percent for people without disabilities.
A few other patterns from the BLS data help explain why a shop like Bitty & Beau’s matters disproportionately to that population:
Workers with disabilities are far more likely to work part time than workers without a disability, about 30 percent compared with 17 percent.
People with disabilities are more likely than people without one to work in service occupations, 20 percent compared with 16.5 percent, and in sales and office jobs, 21 percent compared with 18.6 percent.
People with disabilities are more likely to be self-employed, 9.1 percent compared with 5.9 percent, a pattern advocates often link to a shortage of traditional employers willing to hire and accommodate them.
“The exact kind of small, mission-driven storefront business that has been hit hardest by construction fencing and lost foot traffic is also the kind of workplace that disproportionately employs a population with the fewest other doors open to them.”
In other words, the exact kind of small, mission-driven storefront business that has been hit hardest by construction fencing and lost foot traffic is also the kind of workplace that disproportionately employs a population with the fewest other doors open to them. That isn’t a criticism of the flood project itself, which addresses a documented and worsening problem. It’s a reminder that the costs of a well-intentioned infrastructure project don’t land evenly, and the city’s messaging campaign of banners and shuttle routes hasn’t been enough to keep three businesses on one short block in business.
“The costs of a well-intentioned infrastructure project don’t land evenly.”
The City Dock project is not going away, nor should it, given the flood data behind it. City officials maintain that Dock Street businesses remain open, that pedestrian access is being maintained, and that the disruption is temporary and necessary. Business owners who have already closed or announced plans to close say the disruption arrived faster than the mitigation did.
“Business owners who have already closed or announced plans to close say the disruption arrived faster than the mitigation did.”
Bitty & Beau’s has not said whether it plans to reopen elsewhere in Annapolis. Its statement to CBS Baltimore thanked the community for the past seven years without addressing what comes next for its Dock Street staff or whether any of them will be offered positions at other locations.
Sources: Eye On Annapolis reporting on the Bitty & Beau’s, Annapolis Marine Art Gallery and Storm Bros. Ice Cream Factory situations; CBS News Baltimore reporting on the Bitty & Beau’s closure and recent Annapolis-area business closures; The Baltimore Banner’s reporting on City Dock parking restrictions and business impacts; WMAR-2 News reporting on the Annapolis Marine Art Gallery closure; Chesapeake Bay Magazine and the Maryland Daily Record on the project’s November 2025 groundbreaking; City of Annapolis press releases on the groundbreaking, the FEMA hazard mitigation grant and the construction schedule; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “People with a Disability: Labor Force Characteristics, 2025” (March 2026); Kessler Foundation and University of New Hampshire Institute on Disability, National Trends in Disability Employment report (July 2026); Bitty & Beau’s Coffee company materials.
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