Acclaimed chef closes Kansas City bar, leaving behind trail of frustrated investors

Ça Va was supposed to be back open by now.

After celebrating its 10-year anniversary with a weekend-long party in March, the Champagne bar planned to close for six weeks to revamp its menu and remodel its Westport space at 4149 Pennsylvania Ave.

But apart from a couple of soft re-openings held in April, Ça Va has sat dormant ever since.

It will not reopen, owner Howard Hanna confirmed this week.

“When we closed down to renovate, I knew that we were in bad shape financially, but believed that there was still a bright future at Ça Va if we could refresh some things and breathe new life into it,” Hanna told The Star this week.

But, he added, “I had never intended to be the one to handle the business side of it, and really never needed to until the last year or so. To be honest, I failed miserably at that.”

Ça Va and Hanna both leave behind a trail of unpaid bills and unhappy investors, many of whom were employees who bought equity in the bar from Hanna earlier this year and only later learned the full extent of Ça Va’s financial woes. The money’s gone and so are their jobs.

“I believed in Howard but most importantly, the ethos and culture at Ça Va and the team that fully and genuinely cared for our guests and community,” said Meghan Wheelock, Ça Va’s general manager since February 2023. “For him to dismantle Ça Va in the way that it happened and for me to be complacent and not say anything just wasn’t an option.”

Crossroads collapse

Ça Va was in many ways built on Hanna’s pedigree. A veteran chef in KC’s culinary scene, he’d worked at high-end spots like 40 Sardines, Room 39 and the River Club before opening the celebrated Crossroads restaurant The Rieger Hotel Grill & Exchange in 2010. He was a James Beard Award semifinalist for Best Chef: Midwest in 2014.

Hanna, Justin Norcross and Jim Coley opened Ça Va (pronounced “sah-vah”) that same year. The bar specialized in boutique wines and Champagne, and served a small food menu of French-inspired fare.

The success of The Rieger and Ça Va led Hanna to sign a letter of intent on a 10-year lease in 2018 to open two new restaurants on the ground level of City Club Apartments, a mixed-use development then being built at 1989 Main St., right across the street from The Rieger.

His plans were bold. Not only would Hanna open a wine bar called Afi and an upscale diner called Small Axe, he would do it through Manaia Collective , a new restaurant group he’d formed that sought to transform the restaurant industry by offering workers living wages, health benefits and opportunities for employee ownership.

“I was trying to create a situation where my work life aligned with my personal values and politics,” Hanna said. “I thought (Manaia Collective) could be a way to run serious businesses that didn’t take advantage of workers — that benefited everybody.”

To help fund the restaurants, Hanna sought to raise $100,000 on Mainvest, a crowdfunding platform where small businesses can raise capital from local investors.

The pandemic derailed many of Hanna’s plans. He initially tried to convert The Rieger into a community kitchen . But the restaurant closed permanently in the fall of 2020.

Across the street, construction costs were rising sharply, exacerbated by supply chain issues.

“We hit every snag imaginable during the pandemic,” Hanna said. “The costs of building (Afi and Small Axe) more than doubled, which we could never catch up with.”

He had planned to open the restaurants in 2021. The date was later pushed back to 2022. In 2023, City Club Apartments sued Manaia Collective in Jackson County Circuit Court for back rent and other fees. A judge later ruled that Manaia Collective owed City Club Apartments approximately $275,000, and Hanna was ordered to vacate the spaces.

Manaia Collective (along with City Club Apartments and two investors in the development) also faced a different lawsuit from Allied Retail Concepts, the general contractor on the project, who said in 2023 that it was still owed more than $200,000 for work completed at the development. That suit is still ongoing.

According to the Kansas City Business Journal , Manaia Collective had raised $139,000 through Mainvest, mostly from small-dollar investors. The news of Manaia Collective’s legal and financial problems prompted Mainvest to issue a statement to Manaia Collective’s investors.

“This is obviously extremely concerning, and even more concerning that neither investors nor the Mainvest team were made aware prior to a news article,” Mainvest said in October 2023. “We are working to contact their team to obtain more details, especially details around the current state of investor funds, which were previously reported as used for the build-out.”

But then Mainvest itself went out of business earlier this summer. The sudden closure left many aspiring small businesses in the dark about how to move forward with their fundraising campaigns and investors in Manaia Collective wondering where their money went.

“I’m personally out $1,000 that I invested because I believed in (Hanna’s) concept,” said one local investor who asked not to be identified. “He hasn’t messaged investors or done anything to rectify or apologize to the Kansas Citians that gave them their money. We’re not venture capitalists. I am not wealthy. I want my money back or, at least, an apology from Mr. Hanna for the people who have supported him through the years.”

Hanna told The Star that “every cent” raised for Small Axe and Afi went into the restaurant’s build-out. But with the costs of the project soaring, “we just could not get it over the finish line.”

“I didn’t mean to swindle anybody, and I didn’t profit in any way from this situation,” Hanna said.

Meanwhile, in Westport

In February, Hanna became the sole owner of Ça Va.

Norcross had long ago left as a partner and co-opened another bar, Lucky Boys, and Fortunati Pizza , both in the West Bottoms. Coley departed earlier this year prior to the March closing.

Business at the Champagne bar never bounced back after the pandemic, Hanna said, and bills had begun to pile up.

Wheelock, the bar’s general manager, said she and Hanna worked out a deal where she invested in Ça Va in exchange for equity in the company. The money went to pay past-due invoices from distributors and cover the cost of renovations earlier this year.

A second round brought in four more investors, Wheelock said, who would receive a piece of ownership in Ça Va in exchange for their contributions.

Soon after buying in, though, they learned that Ça Va’s liquor license was being held up due to what Wheelock called a “massive tax bill” that hadn’t been paid — one that, according to Wheelock and others, Hanna had not disclosed to the investors.

“I had disclosed that we were behind on taxes and that I wasn’t sure what the amount was,” Hanna said. “I was way off on my estimate of our total debt, but I never meant to withhold information, or deceive anyone. I just didn’t have a handle on the situation.

“All the money we raised to reopen was spent on new equipment, supplies and labor for the renovation work, and to pay down bills with purveyors or our landlord,” Hanna added.

In July, Ça Va defaulted on its lease and the new owner of the building, Colorado Springs’ Niebur Development, changed the locks. Investors and employees said they struggled to get answers from Hanna in the weeks that followed. A group of investors had again put their money into a Hanna project that had not materialized.

“We worked so hard for a place we love to crumble without a word,” said Lauren Lawler, a Ça Va bartender and one of its recent investors. “The lack of communication and uncertainty ultimately led to being unemployed and (losing our) investments.”

What’s next?

Amante Domingo, who owns Noka and The Russell, recently leased the space at 4149 Pennsylvania St.

He plans to open a combination coffee shop and wine lounge there this winter called Le Champion.

“It’s sort of inspired by Ralph’s Coffee ,” Domingo said, referring to the boutique coffee shop from fashion designer Ralph Lauren. “We’re doing a whole face-lift. It’ll have that signature heritage look that his places have. It’ll be beautiful and airy, with Champagne-colored curtains, sports memorabilia, vintage trophies.”

By day, the focus will be on coffee — Domingo recently bought a La Marzocco machine (“every coffee geek’s dream”) and has been doing training at Onyx Coffee Labs in Bentonville, Arkansas. Domingo’s former business partner Heather White (Tailleur, Cheval, Enchante) will make quiche and pastries for morning customers.

At night, Le Champion will transition to serving wine and cocktails, plus a limited food menu. “I see it as grown-ups having Champagne and small bites before or after dinner,” Domingo said.

If that sounds familiar, it’s intentional.

“I really want to try to celebrate and honor what Ça Va was for a long time — this cozy place that’s kind of just outside Westport,” Domingo said. “I even considered trying to buy Ça Va. But it was just too messy. It was going to be too complicated.”