This business owner just closed two Bellingham restaurants. Here’s why he did it
A Bellingham entrepreneur who recently decided to close two of his downtown restaurants says certain challenges in the neighborhood tipped the scales on his decision to permanently close his businesses.
Jabriel Donohue, co-owner of The Admiralty Lounge and two Seattle restaurants, alongside his business partner, Daniel Pagard, closed two Bellingham restaurants in March: Nacho Problems and Bella Ciao Pizza Tavern.
“Unfortunately, we’re no longer able to sustain operations,” a social media post signed by The Bella Ciao Team states. “Apart from the standard aspects of restaurant operations, which are significant, 2024 was the most challenging year for independent operators that we’ve seen in our entire careers, and we hope for the sake of Bellingham’s restaurant community that many of the shared challenges will be taken seriously by those who want to keep a vibrant independent community in Bellingham.”
The two closures are part of the nine restaurant closures in Whatcom County so far this year. By comparison, 24 new restaurants opened throughout Whatcom County during 2024 as nine closed.
So what makes owning a restaurant in Whatcom County, or specifically, downtown Bellingham difficult?
“Our location in downtown offered significant challenges that were both larger than anticipated and harder to overcome than we initially believed,” Donohue told The Herald. “I am a big advocate of downtown Bellingham and I believe Mayor Lund has worked hard to encourage its reinvigoration but there are problems that date back all the way to the opening of Bellis Fair Mall that need to be addressed.”
Donohue identified three main challenges that are damaging the neighborhood: “the lack of services for downtown’s unhoused population; the overreliance on private shelters rather than city- or state-run institutions; and the lack of public investment and oversight of both addiction services and help for the needy.”
In recent years, downtown Bellingham has gained a reputation of being unsafe because of the presence of unhoused individuals, keeping even local citizens from visiting the area or supporting downtown businesses.
“I want to be clear that at no point did I ever feel like there was an actual danger, but after talking with a lot of people around town it became very apparent that many locals were very sensitive to sharing the street with our most at-risk population after dark,” Donohue said. “I think as a city that prides and promotes itself on progressive values, there’s some soul searching that should probably be done about that because these issues don’t just go away when folks aren’t looking.”
He said some of the safety concerns are justified, as he has observed continuous drug activity downtown.
“A significant issue was that the alley behind us — between Railroad and Cornwall — had become for all intents and purposes an open-air drug market. I had a lot of conversations with my fellow business owners as well as members of the Bellingham Police Department, and that alley was symptomatic of a greater lack of funding for everything from treatment to enforcement, which unfortunately in our modern system often acts as the first step to achieving treatment. This is a problem that has been significantly addressed at this point, with the arrest and disruption of specific dealers who were driving product into the alley as well as the reinstitution of the BPD bike patrols, which I hope get the support to expand their operations to nights as well because they have been a significant benefit to the downtown area.”
Donohue also believes that the delayed relocation of Lighthouse Mission’s Base Camp hurt his business, as the delay caused the unhoused population to stay downtown and decreased customer visits.
“I will say that once base camp relocated and the alley was addressed, at least as much as it has been, we started to see a solid growth in business and general foot traffic. Unfortunately, by that point we’d dumped pretty much all of our resources just into staying open, and we didn’t have what we needed to stay open and grow,” Donohue said.
The rising costs of goods and operating a business also contributed to the decision to close the restaurants.
“The last couple years have been the hardest I have ever experienced in 20 years in the hospitality industry,” he said. “The costs of just about everything have gone up at unsustainable rates, the already challenging profit margins have become next to nonexistent, and the state and federal interest in taking a real look at how we fit in the economy doesn’t really exist.”
“We’ve kept our other businesses afloat by being very creative, flexible and working a lot of very long days and weeks. The hospitality industry is a sort of invisible safety net for a lot of people in America, and I hope soon that it starts to be recognized for not just what we bring in food and drinks, but for its cultural and economic contributions as well. In the meantime we’ll be doing our best to grind it out.”
Although Donohue now only has one business in Bellingham, he still hopes to stay in the city and still sees some benefits of owning a business here.
“The major pro of owning and running a business in Downtown Bellingham is the opportunity to be a part of the revitalization of this wonderful city, and to continue the tradition of Downtown being primarily owned and operated by independent and local business people. I have such incredible memories of Downtown as a child, a teenager, and a young adult and for me it has always been the center of identity and community for our city,” Donohue said.
“When you talk to those of us who have committed to having our businesses down here, it’s because we really believe in the value of a strong downtown for our community as much as anything but it gets discouraging to watch endless conversations about developing the waterfront, or expanding northward when we have so many empty storefronts and unused plots and properties right here.
Donohue believes a possible solution for downtown’s decline could be an increase in housing.
“The price of housing in Bellingham is pretty absurd on its face and the only way it’s going to reach anything reasonable is by increasing the available number of places to live. If you talk to people in the know, there’s a general assent that we need ten thousand more housing units pretty much right now, which means we’ll probably need double that within the next decade. So I’d say we should try to put at least the first five thousand right here in the center of town.”
“I love this town deeply, it’s where I’m from and where I chose to return because of everything it has to offer but I do feel like we’re at an inflection point. There are too many mini-fiefdoms politically, socially, and economically and I feel like the separation of Bellingham’s residents from one another has only become more and more pronounced.”
“I’d love to open another business in Bellingham once we recover from this, which may be a minute, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t already thought about it,” Donohue said.
Donohue will continue to run The Admiralty Lounge downtown, and strives to make the restaurant more of a community space for the city he loves.
“When I was a kid the thing that drew me to restaurants was that I could see people from all walks of life sitting in the same places, sharing space regardless of background. I want to see that again, but I think in order to achieve it a lot of people are going to have to loosen their grip on what they think they have to control and there’s going to have to be a commitment to achieving these logistic goals as a community. It’s one thing to say it, it’s another to actually do it,” Donohue said.
The Admiralty Lounge is a 21+ lounge, and is open from 4-10 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday and 4 p.m. to midnight Thursday through Saturday at 100 N. Commercial St. in downtown Bellingham, next to Mount Baker Theatre.
This story was originally published May 15, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
