One of the Triangle’s best-known breweries is moving to an iconic Durham space
A North Carolina brewing institution is moving its flagship taproom to a Durham landmark.
The influential Durham brewery Fullsteam will join the American Tobacco Campus next year, opening a new 9,000-square-foot taproom and restaurant in the shadow of the Lucky Strike smoke stack.
Fullsteam will move into the historic power plant building on the ATC, founder and owner Sean Lilly Wilson told The News & Observer.
The pioneering Durham brewery announced earlier this summer that it would leave its longtime home on Rigsbee Avenue, in the Geer Street nightlife district it helped establish more than a decade ago.
“For a little longer than we’d like, the story around Fullsteam has been the construction and challenges with our space and our uncertain future on Rigsbee,” Wilson said. “That’s not the story we want to tell anymore. We’re pushing ourselves to even more ambitious heights and we’re turning the page.”
Wilson launched Fullsteam in 2010 as one of Durham’s first ever breweries, opening a production space and taproom in a part of town not known for bars and restaurants. Since then, Fullsteam has won a slew of beer awards and Good Food Awards, and Wilson has been a semifinalist for the James Beard Award for Outstanding Beverage Professional, a national honor.
Fullsteam will close its Rigsbee taproom on Oct. 31, but will continue to brew beer in the facility into 2025. Wilson said future brewing production of its core and seasonal beers will be done at Fortnight Brewing in Cary.
“We’ve pushed this space as much as we can,” Wilson said. “It’s tired. We feel like we’ve had our time here.”
A satellite taproom and pizzeria in Boxyard RTP remains open.
A new ATC
In the last couple years, the American Tobacco Campus has almost entirely remade its restaurant lineup. Newcomers include Seraphine, Press, Zweli’s Ehkaya and QueenBurger. But Wilson believes the development has been missing a casual bar since Tyler’s Taproom closed in 2019.
“There’s been a gap there since Tyler’s closed. There’s an opportunity to be that community watering hole,” Wilson said.
The new Fullsteam space will have a couple different personalities. There will be a cafeteria-style restaurant in the boiler room of the building, modeled after the old Southern meat-n-three, that Wilson sees as a spot for the pre-DPAC crowd.
Then there will be a more familiar taproom with bar snacks, maybe for after-work happy hours or the crowds grabbing a round after a Bulls game.
“We very quickly saw an opportunity to not just address some of the challenges in our old space, but an opportunity to reorient ourselves and reinvigorate a sense of community in Durham,” Wilson said. “That’s why I got into this business in the first place. Here’s an opportunity in the heart of Durham — in the most iconic location in Durham — to be even more of the city’s front porch than we are (on Rigsbee).”
No time for nostalgia
In the blocks around Fullsteam’s current location, hundreds of apartments have just been built, seemingly adding a deep pool of nearby customers. But with the new apartments come new rental prices. Wilson said a long-term lease couldn’t be worked out.
“I feel a sense of gratitude, but I’m not one for nostalgia,” Wilson said. “I’m acutely aware that it’s more important now to look forward and be Fullsteam, than look back with pining and nostalgia. We can’t do much else (on Rigsbee). We’ve already done it.”
The current Fullsteam space closed its kitchen in July as Wilson says the taproom returns to its more stripped down roots. That will include Wilson and his daughter selling paw paws and saplings to mark the impeding release of the brewery’s acclaimed paw paw tripel, Dinnsen’s Orchard.
The brewery will bid farewell to its longtime taproom with a Halloween trivia on Oct. 31.
This story was originally published September 4, 2024 at 10:31 AM with the headline "One of the Triangle’s best-known breweries is moving to an iconic Durham space."
