Edmonds' Oldest Brewery Just Went Dark, and September Reorganized Around It

"We are grateful to the Port and look forward to the sprucing up," Gallaghers' Chris Dufore told My Edmonds News in July, explaining why the tasting room at 180 W Dayton Street would go dark for two months right as Edmonds hits its busiest stretch of the year. It is the kind of quote that sounds like good news dressed up as an inconvenience, and for anyone who has spent a Wednesday evening brewing a batch of pale ale in that Harbor Square space, it is both.

Gallaghers' Where U Brew has poured pints and walked customers through their own beer recipes since 1995, making it the town's longest-running brewery. This September it is closed, not because business slowed down, but because the Port of Edmonds decided this was the month to replace every window in the building. The timing lands the closure squarely across Oktoberfest weekend, a Jon Lovitz show at Edmonds Center for the Arts, and the tail end of peak ferry season, which means the town's oldest gathering spot is sitting out the exact stretch when everyone else is trying to figure out where to be.

That single decision, made by a landlord that answers to a Port commission rather than a market, is a useful reminder for anyone who assumes a business's calendar is entirely its own to set. Dufore and his team don't control when the windows get replaced. They can only post the closure notice, thank the Port for the upgrade, and ask regulars to schedule their bottling runs before August 1.

The Beach Rent Nobody Expected

While Gallaghers sits behind plywood, a different kind of gathering space is quietly closing in on its one-year anniversary a few blocks away. Sauna N Soak, a 14-foot mobile wood-fired sauna, debuted at North Brackett's Landing on August 27, 2025, parked on the sand just north of the restrooms and showers, offering the classic hot-sauna, cold-plunge cycle with a direct view of Puget Sound. A year later it's back for a second autumn, running primarily Thursday through Sunday from sunrise to sunset, with other days available by appointment.

What made the story land with residents wasn't the sauna itself. It was the rent. Owner Matt Pirie pays the City of Edmonds $5,500 a month for the right to sit on that stretch of beach, a figure that surprised enough people that the comment section under the original My Edmonds News writeup turned into an impromptu debate about municipal pricing. One reader argued the city should swap the flat fee for a tiered structure, something closer to $300 to $3,000 a month plus a small percentage of gross revenue, the kind of arrangement regional peers use to balance operator costs against public revenue. Another suggested $1,500 a month plus eight hours of monthly beach cleanup would be the fairer trade.

Nobody in that thread was debating whether a sauna belongs on the beach. They were debating what waterfront access is actually worth when there's no building attached to it at all, just permission to occupy the sand. That's a genuinely different question than the one Gallaghers is dealing with, and the fact that both are playing out in the same month, on the same half-mile of shoreline, says something about how tightly Edmonds' public and private real estate decisions are now wound together.

September at a Glance

Friday's biergarten opens at 3 p.m., with last call at 9:15 and the bands playing until 9:30, and entry to the 21-and-over entertainment zone requires ID and a bag check at the door. Saturday flips the format toward families, with Kids Korner activities from noon to 6 p.m. and the annual Pet Parade, registration opening at noon, the parade itself stepping off at 2 with proceeds going to Old Dog Haven. It's the same fundraiser the Rotary Club of Edmonds has run for years, but the fact that it's happening the same week Gallaghers can't pour a pint means the town's usual overlap between beer festival and brewery crawl doesn't exist this year.

Main Street Commons Finally Sits Full

If you've avoided the plaza at 6th and Main because the last time you checked half the storefronts were still under construction, it's worth another look. Main Street Commons took more than two years to fully lease up. Developer Mike McMurray signed his first four tenants back in 2022, Johnny Mo's Pizzeria opened its doors on November 21, 2023, and Stillhouse Coffee followed with a soft opening the following spring. The project didn't close out until Ethan Stowell's Victor Tavern opened in 2024, the sixth and final piece of a lineup that also includes Molly Moon's Ice Cream, Virtue Cellars Tasting Room, and Copper Rose Bakery.

That full roster is still the one operating today. It's a genuinely different kind of plaza than what existed on that corner before, mixing a Seattle ice cream import with a Richmond Beach family winery and a Chicago-and-New-York dueling-style pizzeria that took nearly thirty years of friendship between its two owners to finally become a restaurant. The wine and pizza sit close enough that a parent can order a flight at Virtue Cellars while kids run next door to watch scoops get pulled at Molly Moon's, which is the kind of layout that only works because every tenant signed a lease at roughly the same corner instead of scattering across downtown.

The Commons filling in matters for the same reason the sauna's rent matters and Gallaghers' closure matters. All three are stories about who controls a piece of ground in Edmonds and what they've decided to do with it this particular September. McMurray spent two years assembling a lineup he wanted, the Port decided this was the month to redo Gallaghers' windows regardless of festival season, and the City set a beach rent that residents are still arguing about a year later. None of those decisions were made by the people who'll actually walk through the door.

What This Actually Means for Your September

If your Wednesday routine usually starts with a pint at Gallaghers, you'll need a new plan for the next few weeks. The plaza at 6th and Main is the obvious fallback, six tenants deep and built specifically for the kind of evening where you want a slice, a glass of wine, and ice cream for the kids without moving your car. If you'd rather skip the crowd entirely, the sauna at North Brackett's Landing is running its normal Thursday-through-Sunday hours and doesn't require picking a side in the beer-versus-wine debate at all.

Oktoberfest weekend is going to be the loudest two days of the month regardless of where you land, and it's worth building around rather than fighting. The Friday biergarten skews adult, the Saturday festival skews family, and both happen at Civic Playfield rather than downtown proper, so neither one competes directly with whatever's happening at Main Street Commons or the waterfront. Jon Lovitz closes out the following week at Edmonds Center for the Arts, giving anyone who wants one more excuse to be downtown a reason to combine dinner at Victor Tavern with a show a few blocks away.

Gallaghers is scheduled to reopen at the end of September, which means the town's oldest gathering spot and its two newest ones will all be operating again at the same time for the first stretch since August. Whether that overlap changes where people actually choose to spend their evenings, or whether the new habits formed this month stick around after the windows go back in, is the kind of thing you only find out by watching what September actually does to a town's routines.

If you're the type of person who tracks these shifts because you're weighing whether now's the time to buy or sell along this stretch of waterfront, that's the conversation Pete Keating has every day. Call or text for a local market consultation grounded in what's actually happening on the ground in Edmonds, not just what the listing sheet says.