This craft beer bar was a Wynwood destination, but it’s closing for new apartments
One of Wynwood’s original hangout spots has an expiration date.
Boxelder Craft Beer Market — the bar that helped foster Miami’s entry into the world of craft beer, in a neighborhood known as the birthplace of city’s craft beer scene — announced its closing date.
The property was bought as part of a $210 million development that will bring high-rise apartments, galleries and mixed-use restaurant spaces to the neighborhood. The bar will close on Oct. 31, its owner said.
Boxelder learned its fate in June 2019, when the London-based developer The Collective announced the deal for the 325,000-square-foot redevelopment. Boxelder’s owners were told they would have 18-24 months before redevelopment began, and that moment arrived on schedule.
“The company that bought our building in 2019 is giving us the boot,” coowner Adam Darnell wrote on Instagram. “We’ve known this day would come, but we’d be lying if we said we weren’t a little saddened by its actuality.”
Adam and Nicole Darnell, a fourth-generation Miamian, opened Boxelder in 2014 as South Florida’s interest in craft beer was taking off. Nearby Wynwood Brewing had recently opened as the city’s first small, artisanal craft-beer brewer and drew Miami’s early hipster crowd to a neighborhood of mostly warehouses.
Boxelder gave them a place to hang out that wasn’t a club or a coffee shop but a relaxed space where the Darnells introduced them to craft beers from around the country. They also nurtured Miami’s craft-beer producers, tapping their beers and introducing them to a new audience.
“The two of us decided we wanted to do this and made it happen. Literally willed Boxelder into being,” Adam Darnell wrote via text. “We don’t have all the money in the world nor are we the most knowledgeable about craft beer (though we do know a bit) but we have approached every aspect of Boxelder with passion and the will to put in the necessary work, and I feel that that has shown and really is what has carried us to where Boxelder is now.”
Boxelder became an incubator for food vendors trying out new concepts. El Bagel started as a bagel food truck behind the bar before it opened a MiMo District location. USBS burgers was cooking on weekends before co-owners Mike Mayta and Keily Vasquez expanded it into one of Miami’s favorite burger spots in The Citadel food hall. And Boxelder is the recent home to Apocalypse Barbecue, which launched during the pandemic.
And it’s where the Darnells met their partner for life after Boxelder.
The couple has teamed with Taquiza taqueria founder Steve Santana, who started his Super Good fried chicken pop up at Boxelder, to open a brewpub, Offsite, in Little River at 8250 NE Second Ave. The pub is weeks away from opening.
“[Santana] is a great chef and maybe more importantly shares a passion for doing things at 100 percent and refining until perfection — or a close as possible — is reached,” Darnell wrote.
And Boxelder isn’t completely going away. The couple plans to open a version of Boxelder in downtown Miami in December. And they are in discussions with a new landlord to open another bar, possibly closer to Miami Shores.
For now, the couple says it will announce events at the bar that started their vision through its Instagram site.