I heard a rumor a while back. The word on the street was Odin Brewing is taking over the old Harmon Hub location in Tacoma’s Stadium District. Harmon Brewing closed the location last summer as part of some other sweeping changes (read about it). Turns out, the rumor about Odin Brewing is true, but there’s more to the story.
If you’re familiar with the building, and the way Harmon Brewing operated at the location, you’ll remember that it is comprised of, basically, a restaurant upstairs on Tacoma Avenue with a brewery and taproom downstairs on St. Helens Avenue. Odin Brewing plans to do the same thing. Kind of.
Dan Lee, the owner of Odin Brewing, says it’s a pretty amazing opportunity. “The building comes with a lot of brewery and restaurant assets included—not just the brewery system downstairs, but the complete commercial kitchen, restaurant furniture, and the rest pretty much ready to go upstairs. Downstairs they were working on a kitchen expansion and left it almost completed.”
The opportunity originally came to the attention of Greg Steed, the owner of Northwest Brewing Company, which closed its taproom in Pacific, Washington back in 2017. Since then, Greg has been looking to once again give his business a public, retail face.
“This opportunity kind of just fell into our lap,” says Dan Lee of Odin Brewing. “Somebody called somebody and then somebody called Greg. He has been wanting to have a real, tangible retail space, but he couldn’t take the whole space.”
This space was larger than what Greg was looking for so he talked to Dan, who has been exploring opportunities in the Seattle-Tacoma area for another Odin Brewing location. The two companies already enjoy a business relationship, with Northwest Brewing’s beer produced at Odin Brewing’s facility in Tukwila by virtue of an alternating proprietorship agreement. The two companies are separate entities, two separate brands, with separate distributor relationships, and so on.
Harmon Brewing operated the entire building as one business. This time around, Odin Brewing and Northwest Brewing Company are reimagining the space. The building is 12,000 square feet overall, with 6,000 square feet on each level. Upstairs is basically one large restaurant space while the downstairs is split between the brewery and a taproom space.
Odin Brewing Tacoma will occupy the entire second floor and also operate the brewery downstairs. Northwest Brewing Company will operate a 3,000 square foot taproom downstairs. The kitchen will eventually get finished downstairs and offer its own food menu.
“Upstairs we’ll have a full-service restaurant,” says Dan. “Eventually we’ll brew on the system in Tacoma, using it to make smaller batch beers and give our brewers more opportunity to be creative.”
About the brewery. I’m guessing here, but it is probably something like a 10-barrel or 10-hectoliter brewhouse with some 10- and 20-barrel fermenters. Along with some other random stuff, there’s also a foeder. When the time comes, this will provide Odin Brewing with a lot of opportunities to have some fun. No fixed schedule on that yet.
Given the state of our COVID-impacted world right now, it’s hard to pin down an opening date for either business. Dan says that they’ll be pretty much ready to go when that state and county move on to the next phase of reopening. Pretty much the same story for the Northwest Brewing taproom downstairs.
The best strategy for consumers to learn about the opening date is to pay attention to both companies’ social media channels. We will share what we know here on the Washington Beer Blog too.
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