Walk past 3400 Phinney Avenue North on a Sunday morning and the building still reads as one thing: a long brick shoulder of a structure with the ghost of a chocolate factory still visible in the signage, quiet in a way that a 32,000-square-foot address in the middle of Fremont has no business being. Theo Chocolate's retail shop closed here in 2025. The factory line inside had already gone silent two years earlier. For a building that has anchored this corner of the neighborhood since before Fremont had streetcars, that kind of stillness is unusual. It is also, as of this fall, about to end in a way the building has never experienced before.
The reopening itself is not the surprising part. Seattle loses and regains landmark buildings on a rolling basis, and a new operator moving into a 121-year-old space barely qualifies as news on its own. What is worth pausing on is who is moving in, and how many of them there are. For its entire working life, this building has belonged to exactly one occupant at a time. This fall, for the first time, it will belong to four.
One Tenant, Three Eras
The building started in 1905 as the Fremont Trolley Barn, built to store roughly 60 of Seattle's streetcars back when the rail system still ran through this stretch of the city. When the streetcar network shut down in 1941, the barn's original purpose went with it, and the building sat waiting for its next single-minded use.
That use arrived in 1989, when Redhook Brewery moved its production facility in and opened the Trolleyman Pub alongside it. Fremont's chapter as a brewing landmark began the same year the city designated the building itself a Seattle landmark, which is part of why the shell has survived intact through every ownership change since. Redhook ran beer production and a public house under one roof, one company, one identity stamped on the whole address.
Theo Chocolate took over next, holding the space for nearly two decades before its 2023 merger with the American Licorice Company ended local factory operations. The retail shop hung on a little longer, closing in 2025. Add it up and the building's post-streetcar life breaks into exactly two long chapters: Redhook, then Theo. In each case, one company used the entire footprint for one line of work. That is the pattern a Fremont resident who has lived here through either era would recognize without needing it explained.
Four Names Under One Roof This Fall
The company taking over now is Here Today Brewery & Kitchen, which has run its waterfront taproom and restaurant at 2815 Elliott Avenue since 2022. Owners Chris Elford and Dave Riddle are not simply moving that concept a few miles north. According to reporting from the Puget Sound Business Journal, they are splitting the old trolley barn into as many as six separate tenant spaces, with three of their own concepts confirmed for a fall debut and room left over for others.
Here's what's actually landing there:
- Good Bones Coffee, a new cafe concept from the Here Today team
- Glitter Paw Lounge, a taproom carrying the name of one of Here Today's existing beers
- Marigolds, described as a pint-sized cocktail and oyster bar
- Muddy Goose, a pottery studio leasing roughly 5,100 square feet for classes and kiln space, expected to open in October
The first three are still Here Today's own brands, which means the company is doing something closer to what Redhook once did with its brewery-and-pub pairing, just with three storefronts instead of two. Muddy Goose is the piece that actually breaks the pattern. It is not owned by Here Today, has nothing to do with beer or coffee or oysters, and will occupy part of a building that has never before housed a tenant unconnected to whoever held the master lease. A hundred and twenty years of streetcars, beer, and chocolate all came from a single operator using the whole space for a single purpose. A pottery studio moving in alongside three food-and-drink concepts from a different company is the first real subdivision this building has seen.
The Building Is Catching Up to the Neighborhood Around It
Fremont's other commercial turnover this year tells a slightly different story, and the contrast is useful. When the neighborhood's old two-story Starbucks closed, it reopened as a single new tenant, Moment, serving matcha and espresso drinks alongside a basque cheesecake menu. One occupant replaced another occupant. That is the same anchor-tenant logic the trolley barn followed for over a century, just on a smaller scale and a shorter cycle.
Big Bud Press chose Fremont this year for its first Pacific Northwest retail store, following a pattern of picking neighborhoods known for independent businesses and creative density, the same kind of corridor logic that led the brand to Highland Park and Echo Park in Los Angeles, the Lower East Side in New York, and Wicker Park in Chicago. A national retailer picking Fremont because it reads as an indie corridor is its own small vote of confidence in the neighborhood's identity, but it is still one company taking one storefront.
The one Fremont institution that has never worked this way is the Fremont Sunday Market, which runs its 36th season this year on the same weekly schedule it has kept since 1990: every Sunday, rain or shine, along the ship canal near the Fremont Bridge, with well over a hundred vendors setting up and packing down in the same afternoon. The market has always been granular. No single vendor has ever defined it, and no single closure has ever threatened it, because it was built from the start as many small businesses sharing one footprint rather than one business claiming the whole thing.
That is the model the trolley barn is finally adopting, a hundred and twenty years after it first opened its doors. The building spent a century being defined by whoever held the lease. This fall it starts being defined by four different names, none of which owns the whole address.
What to Actually Watch For
If you live near Phinney and 34th, the practical version of this is simple. Good Bones Coffee, Glitter Paw Lounge, and Marigolds are all targeting a fall opening, though none of the reporting so far has locked in exact dates, so the safest bet is to watch Here Today's own channels for the announcement rather than guessing at a weekend. Muddy Goose has a firmer target of October for its pottery classes and studio space. The building still has room for at least two more tenants beyond the four confirmed so far, which means this particular story is not finished. Whoever fills those remaining suites will be the ones who decide whether the trolley barn ends up looking like a food hall, a small business incubator, or something closer to what Redhook and Theo built before it: one identity, just arrived at differently this time.
Fremont has always been a neighborhood that turns commercial space over without losing its character, and a landmark building learning to hold four tenants instead of one is a small but real sign of how that character keeps adapting. If you're watching how a neighborhood like this holds its value over time, changes like this one are worth paying attention to, not because a coffee shop or a pottery studio moves the market on its own, but because they tell you something about how a place is actually being used. If you want a second set of eyes on what a shift like this means for property in Fremont or anywhere else in Seattle, the Greely Group is glad to help you make sense of it. Schedule a free consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
