Lompoc Brewing, one of Portland’s remaining connections to the city’s early craft-beer scene, is shutting down after a 23-year run, the North Portland-based brewery announced Thursday.

Owner Jerry Fechter said he will close Lompoc’s two pubs on North Williams Avenue -- the 5th Quadrant and Sidebar -- as well as the brewery there. Fechter will continue to own and operate Oaks Bottom Public House as a neighborhood pub, though it will not have the Lompoc name nor serve Lompoc beers after they run out.

Lompoc’s last day of business at 5th Quadrant will be Tuesday, Oct. 29.

The brewery will hold a “garage sale” to sell off its beer inventory. The event, on Saturday, Nov. 2, will be held from noon to 5 p.m. at Sidebar, 3901 N. Williams Ave., and will also include sales of vintage Lompoc bottles, merchandise and glassware, among other items.

Head brewer Bryan Keilty, who started at Lompoc over a decade ago, will move on to another brewery, the company said in a news release without providing more details.

The company said it will be offering a severance package to remaining employees, though details were not made public. Lompoc also will try to absorb as many North Portland workers as possible at Oaks Bottom, the news release said.

In the news release, Fechter thanked all who supported Lompoc over more than two decades. “To quote another Jerry, ‘What a long strange trip it’s been.’ Cheers!”

The closure is the latest in a string of setbacks for longtime Portland breweries. In the past year, Portland’s once-beloved BridgePort Brewing closed, Portland Brewing and Widmer Brothers Brewing closed once-packed restaurants, and brewpubs Alameda Brewhouse, Columbia River Brewing and Burnside Brewing shut their doors. In addition, Laurelwood Brewing closed its Westmoreland pub and sold off its production side.

Lompoc has roots back to 1993, when partners Pete Goforth and Bob Rice opened the Old Lompoc Tavern in a Northwest Portland building that originally was a carriage house for the 1905 World’s Fair. In 1996, they decided to build a brewery and hired Fechter, a homebrewer, as their first brewer.

Then in 2000, Fechter, along with well-known Portland publican Don Younger, bought the brewpub and renamed it the New Old Lompoc. “The name was all Don’s idea,” Fechter says in the story of Lompoc’s history. “Every time we told somebody where it was going to be, they’d say ‘Oh, it’s where the Old Lompoc was.’”

The place flourished and was a favorite Portland hangout. Lompoc in 2003 added the Hedge House on Southeast Division Street, then, needing more brewing capacity, it opened the 5th Quadrant two years later. The seven-barrel brewhouse, which would eventually grow to 15 barrels, took the strain off the original 5-barrel system in Northwest.

A year later, growth continued with the opening of Oaks Bottom, which would become known for its “totchos,” or tater tot nachos, developed by Fechter’s partner there, the late Jim Parker, a longtime Portland publican. And in 2009, Lompoc added another bar space, Sidebar, next to the 5th Quadrant.

But the original location, on Northwest 23rd Avenue between Raleigh and Savier streets, would eventually become a victim of a neighborhood growing increasingly upscale. The owner of the building – a pub and back patio that showed its age but retained its quaint charm – razed it in 2012 in favor of modern apartments with ground-floor retail.

Closed for a year during construction, the New Old Lompoc reopened as the Lompoc Tavern, a more dressed-up version of its original casual self, and made a go of it in its new space. But it could never regain its footing, as the late-night and neighborhood regulars that had cherished its comfort and reliability had moved on from the upscale neighborhood.

In September 2018, Lompoc sold the storefront space to Tap & Table on 23rd, a taproom and pub. A year earlier, a beer landscape that had grown increasingly competitive had also forced Lompoc’s Hedge House Pub on Southeast Division Street to close, giving way to an acclaimed upstart, Little Beast Brewing.

"The time has come for us to move on," owner Jerry Fechter said a year ago when the Northwest 23rd tavern closed. "We're embracing this as an opportunity to invest more time and attention on the remaining pubs and brewery, and making them the best that they can be."

But the two remaining pubs couldn’t save the brewery, which struggled in a Portland beer scene that now includes more than 70 breweries, many of which hold more sway over today’s modern craft-beer crowd. Lompoc had consistently produced over 2,000 barrels annually for most of the past decade, peaking with 2,779 in 2014, but it had dropped down to 1,992 in 2018.

Known for longtime favorite flagships C-Note IPA and Proletariat Red, Lompoc crafted and distributed its pub ales and lagers throughout Oregon and parts of Washington, including its Lomporter porter, Pamplemousse Citrus IPA and Parkways Pils. It had a significant barrel-aging program, and every year it would released anywhere from 25 to 40 seasonals, including its winter ale C-sons Greetings.

-- Andre Meunier

Check out Andre’s beer reviews on Untappd, where he’s andremeunier13, and follow him on Instagram, where he’s @oregonianbeerguy.

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