April 28, 2026

Top Hat Bar & Lounge has found its next home downtown.

The longtime bar at 508 S. First Ave. will be relocating to the former Glacial Lakes Distillery & Brewhouse space at 200 S. Main Ave.

“We needed to find a place and needed to find a place quickly,” said owner Andrea Shaw, who learned in March that her lease would not be renewed.

That same day, she was having dinner downtown when she saw a “for lease” sign in front of Glacial Lakes, which closed earlier this year.

“None of us had ever been in here,” she said. “I’m at The Hat. I don’t get out very much.”

She called listing broker Ron Nelson, founder of Nelson Commercial Real Estate, that same night and said she was interested in looking at the building.

“He showed me on a Saturday … and we just started the ball rolling,” she said.

Shaw reached out shortly after the Glacial Lakes space went on the market for lease, Nelson said.

“The fact that they’re excited makes me excited,” he said. “They have a lot of cool ideas. The patio component is an entirely new direction that will change the summer landscape.”

He sees clear benefit to locating near other bars and restaurants, including The Orion Pub, Parker’s Bistro, Myrtle’s Fur Vault & Bar and MacKenzie River Pizza, Grill & Pub.

“I’m hopeful this will create one more stop,” Nelson said. “It’s increasingly making Main Avenue more viable.”

The space was extensively renovated by Glacial Lakes — but it’s distinctly not a “dive bar” vibe like Top Hat.

“Everybody keeps saying, ‘It’s going to be a dive bar, right?'” she said. “It’s hard because it’s so pretty in there.”

It’s also smaller than her current space, so she’s planning to be creative about how to make it work and will buy the patio furniture to expand her seating.

“The bar community will come with us,” she predicts. “We will do the best we can, and all my employees are coming with me.”

Shaw could open as soon as later this summer with beer and wine only before moving her liquor license at the end of the year when her First Avenue lease expires.

“We all are really excited about the new place, “she said. “It will be nice to be downtown and not on the east corner of it.”

Even so, leaving her longtime space behind is still “really sad,” she added. “This has been home.”

Both Top Hat and the vacant Printers Inc. building to the south are owned by a chapter of American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association, the largest and oldest grassroots organization for American citizens of Greek heritage. A new use for the buildings has not been announced yet.