White Center’s Lumber Yard Bar Reopens After Year+ Long Closure Due To Arson

November 7, 2022• byMichael Strangeways

Lumber Yard Bar owners Nathan Adams and Michale Farrar. Photo via FB.

It’s been a long journey for The Lumberyard Bar, the gay bar in White Center, the unicorporated southwest of Seattle neighborhood. The popular bar, located at 9619 16th Ave SW in the commercial district of White Center was destroyed in an arson started fire early in the morning of July 5th, 2021 along with a long strip of adjacent businesses on the west side of 16th Avenue SW.

But, the White Center community as well as fans and patrons of The Lumber Yard quickly rallied around owners Nathan Adams and Michale Farrar and created online fundraising projects to support the couple and enable them to create a new home for the bar.

By fall of 2021, a new space had been found for The Lumber Yard 2.0…directly across the street from the first incarnation. Remodeling began but the build out took longer than anyone had expected. Fans of the bar had hopes the bar would reopen in time for Pride celebrations in June of this year and then by end of summer but build outs tend to take longer than expected.

They didn’t make Halloween, but The Lumber Yard Bar will be open today for Election Day 2022…the bar had a quiet soft opening this past Saturday, then formally announced they were back in business on Sunday. Via Facebook:

Thank you so much to everyone that made it out this weekend for our soft opening of The LumberYard bar. We really appreciate the community and the support. We are closed today for a monkeypox clinic. We will reopen on Monday with regular business hours. Thank you again!
– Michale, Nathan and the entire Lumberyard staff.

New hours for the bar:

So far, no word on any plans for a Grand Reopening Celebration but stay tuned.

About the Author: Michael Strangeways

As the Editorial Director/Co-Owner, Michael Strangeways writes, edits and does about a million other jobs for Seattle Gay Scene, Puget Sound's most visited LGBTQ news, arts and entertainment website now celebrating its 14th year as a media outlet. A semi-proud Midwesterner by birth, he's lived in Seattle since 2000. He's also a film producer who would like you to check out the Jinkx Monsoon documentary, "Drag Becomes Him" now available on Amazon.com. In his spare time, he gets slightly obsessive about his love for old movies, challenging theater, "otters", vodka, chocolate, "I,Claudius", Lizzie Borden, real books made out of paper, disaster films, show tunes, Weimar era Germany, flea markets, pop surrealistic art, the sex lives of Hollywood actors both living and dead, kitties, chicken fried steak, haute couture and David Bowie. But, not necessarily in that order.