A new beer garden is coming to Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.
It will be located at 33 Fairfax Street. A building on the property that housed Portals, Awakenings Health Center and the Himalayan Handicrafts was heavily damaged by an April 2015 fire. The building was eventually torn down, leaving an empty lot. It has remained empty since.
The beer garden is the project of Paul Fogarty, partner of Trey Johanson — owner of the Fairfax Coffee Shop.
“It was an open field,” Fogarty told This Week in Morgan County with Russell Mokhiber. “It felt like an empty space in the center of town. I think people were personally hurt by the fire and felt the absence of the building. I started collecting ideas informally. We just kept getting different feedback. People kept talking about wanting a place where families could go, where people could congregate, that was more of an outdoor space, that had games.”
“The one idea that held everything together was a beer garden. It will have open seating at picnic tables. You are sitting next to people you may not know. There will be games for kids of all ages — outdoor chess board, corn hole, darts, bocce, possibly a climbing wall.”
“We want to have artists and performers to have a place to present. And we have a simple rule for performers and artists — if people are moving toward you, you can keep doing whatever it is you are doing. If they are moving away, you have to go with them. It’s that informal way of saying — make yourself welcoming.”
The original name of the beer garden was BSWV. But Fogarty said — “that name isn’t catching.” The current working name is The Source.
Fogarty said he hopes to have the beer garden open by the end of the summer or early fall.