A 31,000-square-foot, 1905-built utilitarian industrial building recognized as an official Seattle landmark is getting a new lease on life as a craft beverage hub. The former Seattle Trolley Building in Fremont once housed the city’s 60 rail cars and operated as a trainsmen’s quarters and repair shop. Later it became storage for the U.S. Army during World War II. After that, a waste disposal company parked their garbage trucks there.
Beer lovers, of course, will know the iconic trolley building as the home of Seattle’s original craft brewery, Red Hook, launched there in 1988. Later, Theo Chocolate called it home for 17 years before they sold to the American Licorice Company in 2023 and wound down operations.
Flanked by nearby space that once housed the iconic craft beer mecca, Brouwer’s Cafe, the two-story, red-brick production space has been a sad reminder of the Fremont neighborhood’s declining craft sector. But a new day is here. Chris Elford, co-owner of Here Today Brewing and the now-closed No Anchor, is bringing not one, not two, but three fresh new concepts to 3400 Phinney Avenue N.
Elford opened Here Today Brewing in 2022 with co-founder Dave Riddile in the Belltown/Waterfront neighborhood of Seattle, and with this new venture, they are broadening the brewery’s concept beyond the vacation-and-burger-centric brewpub where they started. The new Here Today will have a new name and vibe: Glitter Paw Lounge.
“I am a creative person and have little desire to stamp out the same taproom over and over,” says Elford. “I want to give people a reason to choose one or another, by giving them different personalities.”
Elford is partnering with Matt Pachmayr to run the taproom. He’s best known from his No Call No Show collaborative pop-up food and cocktail series. Glitter Paw Lounge will be a more winter-centric space as opposed to Here Today’s summer aesthetic. Expect a cozy fireplace, a pink felt pool table, and seating you can really sink into for 365 days a year, no matter the temperature outside.
Marigolds is another part of the equation that complements Here Today’s brews and Glitter Paw’s taproom. Marigolds will highlight cocktails and oysters in an intimate second floor loft. Adam Aly is at the wheel at Marigolds, overseeing a “cheeky cocktails” program for today’s drinkers that may not be as devoted to a single alcoholic beverage as they once were. That’s saying a lot, considering Here Today was nominated for Best New American Cocktail Bar by Spirited, and Elford’s other bar, Navy Strength, actually won said award in 2018.
“These cocktails will be speedy to serve and easy to understand, but beneath the surface will be all of the technique and intention of our other cocktail bars. We just want the bar for entry to be low so that guests have an easy time deciding,” says Elford.
The third concept, a coffee shop with a name yet to be announced, will see Elford partnering with Gray Kauffman, a well-known Seattle coffee veteran. The cafe will be an homage and addition to Seattle’s influential coffee scene that gave birth to Starbucks as well as artisans like Milstead & Co. and Cafe Allegro.
“We are going to honor this through the ways we storytell in the shop,” says Elford. “Expect zines, cheeky stickers, calls to the early days of the internet. Coffee, like other beverages, should be fun. Serious coffee is easy to replicate, but personality isn’t. Our friends at Gloom Coffee do this extremely well.”
All three concepts will have tributes to the past.
“We are extremely sentimental people,” says Elford. “Marigolds is so named because of the flowers placed on the ofrenda in Mexico to honor the dead. With all of these bars, but that one in particular, we want to honor the spirit of the businesses and people that came before us to help shape the type of hospitality we love.”
Rocky Yeh, Marco Haines and Chris Patino were three people particularly influential to Elford’s food and beverage journey that are no longer with us. Their impact will be memorialized in both visual and liquid tributes in the spaces which Elford thinks will be open by the end of the year.
“The point is that all of these spaces are temporary, as all of us are temporary. What can we create with the time we have?” adds Elford.
