In Salt Lake City’s ever-changing Granary District, Fisher Brewing Co. bursts with activity: patrons chat with each other, servers hustle to clear empty glasses and beer bubbles in production vats.
Across town, Fisher Mansion, home of the original brewery’s founder, Albert Fisher, sits vacant with boarded-up windows, overlooking the flowing Jordan River.
But the current operators of the resurrected brewery — the original company stopped selling beer in 1967 at the height of the industry’s consolidation era — say there’s a possibility that they could move back in and return to the west-side neighborhood where it all started.
“We would have interest in it,” co-owner Tim Dwyer said, “pending details about build-out, lease terms and timeline.”
Dwyer said city staff have asked if the brewery would be open to operating a location at the mansion, adding that the two sides have had some “cursory conversations” about the idea.
The mansion and the brewery
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Mayor Erin Mendenhall listens in as Heidi Steed gives a brief history of the Jordan River as the Westside Coalition hosts a walk along the Jordan River Trail to learn about the river and the trail and discuss its future on Tuesday, June 25, 2025. In the background is the historic Fisher Mansion.
Mayor Erin Mendenhall and others have floated the idea of the mansion hosting a bar or restaurant on its bottom floor, with nonprofit offices above. Dwyer confirming his company’s tentative interest in the space — which includes a commercial kitchen left over from its days as a halfway house — comes as City Council members consider appropriating additional funds to the Victorian Eclectic structure’s restoration.
The mansion has long been considered a key to the revitalization of the Jordan River corridor because of its location just south of the planned Power District and its iconic architecture.
The eponymous Fisher, who was an immigrant from Germany, started the brewery in 1884 before Utah even became a state. By 1893, he had become successful enough to pay Richard Kletting — the later architect of the Utah Capitol and the original Salt Palace — to design and build a mansion for him and his family. The brick building features a Fisher family crest on its facade and a large wraparound stone porch.
The former Fisher brewery stood just next door, but was razed in the 1980s. An Enbridge Gas building now sits at that site.
In 2017, Dwyer and three other partners revived the brewery in an old Granary District auto shop near 300 West and 800 South. A 2022 expansion there tripled the company’s production capacity.
Restoration, planning underway
While Dwyer expressed an interest in being involved in the mansion’s next chapter, he cautioned that there is still a lot that has to be done before the company seriously considers opening a location on the property. The city-owned structure still needs significant rehabilitation, for example.
Dwyer said the company needs the city to provide a clear path to establishing an alcohol-related business there via careful zoning and use standards. He also feared that a bar wouldn’t be allowed on city-owned property.
Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Services spokesperson Michelle Schmitt said the state has handed out liquor licenses to businesses leasing space on publicly owned parcels in the past. In fact, the Tin Angel restaurant located inside of Salt Lake County-owned Eccles Theater currently holds a full-service restaurant license, which allows it to serve beer, wine and liquor with food.
Schmitt also noted that the mansion seemingly wouldn’t have any issues with being too close to a church, school or other protected property. State law requires bars and restaurants that sell alcohol to be a certain distance from such locations. Schmitt encouraged prospective bar and restaurant operators to confer with the department on proximity concerns before moving any further in their efforts to secure licenses.
On the rehabilitation front, city officials are currently using money from a $3 million bond to stabilize the mansion after it suffered damage in the March 2020 earthquake. And there’s still other work to be done.
“Custom repair work is needed for windows, walls and historic wood finishes, along with basic upgrades for heating, cooling and plumbing systems,” said Sofia Jeremias, spokesperson for the city’s Community and Neighborhoods Department. “While the city is using recently approved funds to address some of the repairs, funding gaps remain.”
A $400,000 proposal in the city’s fiscal 2026 capital improvement program budget could help make those upgrades, if approved by City Council members. A separate $500,000 constituent proposal to send money to the mansion was not recommended by Mendenhall and not considered when the council set the maximum amount of funds they would spend on capital improvements this year.
That request noted more work also needs to be done on the stone railing that lines the porch.
Jeremias said the city is planning to issue a request for proposals from possible tenants of the building by the end of the year and said future occupants will likely have to find additional funding to make further upgrades.
Flowing forward
City Council member Alejandro Puy said getting the mansion active and beautiful again has been a slog.
“Sometimes it feels like pulling teeth. But it is not because anybody in particular is a problem, but the funding and lack of visioning of what we want to see there and then the timelines of a city, sometimes make it frustrating as far as how long things take,” said Puy, whose district includes the mansion. “But in general, I am excited that there is movement in the right direction, that it is just not stuck.”
Fisher Brewing has been trying to speed up the process of rehabilitating the mansion, too. It has hosted an annual party, called the Fisher Mansion Beer Garden, every September with some of the proceeds going to the Friends of Fisher Mansion, a nonprofit looking out for the structure. This year the event is happening Sept. 20-21.
The Friends of Fisher Mansion group has also drawn up a report on the home’s health. The nonprofit plans to have a presentation of its findings at Fisher Brewing on July 23.
“It’s really an important part of Salt Lake history,” Dwyer said. “It’s a very beautiful building, architecturally, and it deserves to be used, and it deserves to be rehabbed so it can be used.”
