The Brew Hub Artists, Vendors Find Home In Refurbished Schade Brewery

It looks like a Romanesque cathedral, looming above East Trent.

It’s the Schade Brewery, built in 1903 and fashioned after a classic German brewery. This magnificent brick monument produced beer by the bucket for Spokane’s working men until Prohibition drained the life out of it in 1918.

Then the abandoned building became the Hotel De Gink, a roost for hobos and railroad tramps during the Great Depression.

In 1933, the Golden Age Brewery refilled the vats and barrels again, but the foam went flat on that business by 1950.

In 1957, it became a scrap metal business called Inland Metals Co., which means that an entire generation of Spokanites knew this building only as a big junk yard.

But now, after five years of mega-remodeling, the building has entered a new phase: The Schade Brewery Public Market.

It might be better to call it the Schade Brewery Public Market and Antique Mall and Carpet Manufacturers Outlet and Billy Bob’s Produce and Otter Creek Salmon and … well, there’s a whole lot going on in this building.

“It’s a monster of a building,” said marketing director Sara Sexton-Johnson.

“I think it’s about 66,000 square feet,” said Gailya Bonzon, who owns the building with her husband, Louis Bonzon.

The top three floors are still the domain of pigeons and rusting beer vats, but the remodeled main floor is so spacious that an orientation tour is necessary at this point.

As you enter through the front, you’ll first encounter Billy Bob’s Produce, a year-round fruit and vegetable shop. It shares space with Otter Creek Salmon (smoked salmon and frozen salmon rushed in from Alaska) and an espresso cart.

As you continue on, you’ll run into the Carpet Manufacturers Outlet, a business that the Bonzons have been running in the building for five years. For several of those years, it was the only business in the building. But now it occupies only a corner.

“A lot of people think it’s gone, but it’s still here,” said Gailya Bonzon.

The middle part of the building is the Antique Mall. About 10 different antique dealers display their wares in one big room; they also accept consignments. The Antique Mall has been open for three years.

Make your way through that and you enter the newest part of the Schade Brewery, the Public Market. Bonzon and Sexton-Johnson are wary of making grand comparisons, but it has the potential to become Spokane’s indoor equivalent of Seattle’s Pike Place Public Market.

It has been open only since Oct. 7, but already it has about 40 booths.

You’ll find a healthy variety of items: pottery, Russian dolls, leather goods, tie-dyed T-shirts, dream-catchers, hot sauces, Lithuanian crafts, jewelry, beadwork, wildlife items, artwork, Indian crafts, clothing, Chinese imports, ceramic tile, marble work, used paperbacks, caramel corn and luggage.

“It looks like Europe,” said one customer browsing through the place this week. “Like a market in Italy.”

The idea for the market began when some vendors from the old Spokane Marketplace convinced the Bonzons that the building would be a perfect indoor spot for a marketplace. After a $400,000 bank loan from United Security Bank and plenty of sandblasting, wiring and duct work, the market was born.

Think of it as a small business incubator.

“We developed the idea that every one of these people could be a small business of their own,” said Bonzon. “Next year, they could grow large enough to have their own place. They could move out and other small ones could move in.”

The market has a central cashier, where customers take their goods to be rung up. This makes life easier and cheaper for small entrepreneurs, because they don’t need to staff their booths all day every day.

Sexton-Johnson said the market is also intended to be a performance space.

“We’ve been having blues music here on Saturday and Sunday,” she said. “Actually, musicians could come in and throw down a hat if they want to. We want that public market feel.”

The market is also sponsoring special cultural events every month. The first will take place Nov. 17-18 during market hours. It’s a celebration sponsored by the American Indian Community Center, and it will feature a wide array of Native American culture.

Indian crafts will be on display. There will be exhibition dancing narrated by Veronica Brown Eagle. Gloria Probst will make her Indian fry bread, and she will also have Indian tacos for sale.

George Flett will display his art and also have a full-sized teepee set up inside the market.

Two segments from one-act comedies written by Darryl Gua of the American Indian Community Center will be performed by a group called Vision Dreamers. One of the actors will be William J. White, who played Dave the cook on “Northern Exposure” for four and a half years.

These events will be free for market patrons.

Meanwhile, construction workers are hammering away on more renovations in the old brewery. The next step is a food court, located in the big hall that connects to the market space.

According to Bonzon, a number of food vendors are already signed up: John’s Barbecue, Bodacious Buffalo (buffalo burgers and sausage) and Side Wok, to name a few. The food court should be going strong by early next year.

Bonzon also looks at the upper floors and imagines a glorious future of brew pubs, view restaurants, offices and even loft-like condos.

Why not? The Condos De Gink has a certain ring to it.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color photos

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: SCHADE BREWERY PUBLIC MARKET Address: 528 E. Trent Hours: Mondays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 4 p.m. Phone: 455-5105