Three retailers are aiming for summer opening at the waterfront’s Granary building
Three potential tenants are hoping to be in place later this year on the ground floor of the Granary Building on the Bellingham waterfront.
Artivem Mead Co. appears to be furthest along, with permits in hand and remodeling work about to begin. Co-owner Carlos Bassetti said he and Micah Mailand plan to have a production facility and tasting room ready by this summer, serving mead and cider.
While one of the oldest fermented beverages around, mead is a drink that can be hard to get people to try. One of the reasons Bassetti and Mailand settled on Bellingham is because it’s a place where residents like to try different kinds of drinks, as shown by the number of craft breweries and cider places in the community.
With the tasting room, the plan is to spend time talking about mead. Bassetti is hoping groups of friends will come down for the waterfront views and try something a little different. He noted that mead is stronger than craft beer, with an alcohol volume content of around 13%.
“We are where craft beer was in the ‘90s,” Bassetti said, noting that he’s seeing signs that it is growing in popularity.
Bassetti’s goal is to showcase the wide variety of flavors mead can offer. They plan on having five different mead offerings and won’t make the same product twice for the first year. They plan on starting off by selling growlers, eventually adding smaller bottles. At this point they expect distribution to be limited, so they can focus on producing a quality product for the tasting room.
The Artivem name mashes together two Latin words, art and bird, which is incorporated into the logo. For further details about the company and opening day updates, visit Artivem’s website or its Instagram account.
▪ A couple of other tenants are making progress toward opening this summer as well, according to Chris Erdmann of the real estate group Erdmann Graves & Partners.
Arboretum Coffee will be in the middle area of the first floor, while a business called Tea Artist will be on the south side. Tea Artist will be serving tea, bubble tea and ice cream, said Erdmann, the leasing agent for the building. Already in place on the upper floors are Honey Salon and the Bellingham Yoga Collective.
The Granary was built in the 1920s to store grain, eggs and poultry for the county’s booming band of small-time chicken farmers, according to earlier Bellingham Herald stories. It is the first building on the former industrial waterfront to be redeveloped, by Harcourt Developments, in collaboration with the Port of Bellingham.
This story was originally published February 16, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
