For nearly 90 years, the block on Church Street between historic downtown and the railroad corridor was a working lumberyard. Truckee Tahoe Lumber Company ran operations there from 1931 to 2020. Drive past it in 2021 and you saw a cleared lot behind chain-link. Drive past it today and you see something Truckee has never quite had before: a pedestrian-scaled district, designed from scratch, where you can eat wood-fired pizza, drink a locally brewed IPA, take a fitness class, and sit by a fire pit with a view of Mt. Rose Wilderness — all within about 100 feet of each other.
The Old Lumberyard is not a new restaurant. It is the first time downtown Truckee has gotten a purpose-built gathering district, and as of early 2026, five of its tenants are open and running.
Why This Is Different From a Normal Opening
Truckee's food and drink scene has always grown the way mountain towns grow: organically, one available storefront at a time. Individual businesses here are strong. What the town has never had is a designed district — a place you go to spend an evening moving between things rather than making a single reservation and going home.
CF Holding Company spent years redeveloping the former TTL site on Church Street. Construction began in 2022. The Phase 1 ribbon-cutting happened December 1, 2025. The site includes public plazas, fire pits, public art, EV charging, and a transit center — infrastructure that frames the tenants as pieces of a single place rather than a strip of independent storefronts.
Jackie Calvert, executive director of Visit Truckee Tahoe, said it clearly at the ribbon-cutting: "Being able to gather in front of the fire pit and talk about your day over a craft beer is also an experience we all love, and one that complements the mountain life." That sentence describes every après-ski conversation Truckee residents have been having for decades. The Old Lumberyard is the first place in town designed specifically to host it.
What's Open Right Now
The Sierra Sun confirmed in February 2026 that all five Phase 1 tenants are now operating at 10242 Church Street.
DOPO Pizza and Pasta
DOPO is owned by Greg Buchheister, who opened Coffeebar in downtown Truckee in October 2010 and built it into one of the town's most recognizable local brands over the following 15 years. Coffeebar handles the morning. DOPO handles everything after. The name means "after" in Italian — after skiing, after hiking, after work — and the menu runs wood-fired pizza, pasta, and Italian wines designed for a table of four that can't agree on anything except that they're hungry. Buchheister told the Sierra Sun that longtime Coffeebar customers he hadn't seen in over a decade started walking through DOPO's door once it opened. The space incorporates local artwork — the California Zephyr, Donner Summit landmarks, a bear motif — and feels more urban in finish than most Truckee interiors, which reads as intentional given the site's railroad history.
FiftyFifty Brewing Company
FiftyFifty didn't open a satellite taproom at the Lumberyard. It moved its entire flagship operation here from The Rock. Co-founder Alicia Barr has said the brewery "probably outgrew our current Truckee location five years ago" — the new Church Street space was designed from scratch to handle pilot brewing and manufacturing alongside the full brewpub, with a bar, lounge, second-floor game area, and private dining. That distinction matters: this is a brewpub built to the scale FiftyFifty's production actually requires, not a placeholder while the real expansion happens elsewhere.
Alpenswing
Alpenswing covers the entertainment programming: indoor golf and axe throwing. For anyone looking for a midweek activity in January when conditions outside are not cooperating, this fills a gap that downtown Truckee has not had a direct answer to.
LIV Studio
LIV Studio brings fitness classes into the mix. Alongside DOPO and Coffeebar, it completes a lineup that covers morning, evening, and the hours in between — essentially the full daily rhythm of a mountain-town resident, in one walkable block.
The Counter-Trend That Explains Why This Works
For years, the dominant pattern in Truckee's food economy ran downhill. Several Truckee-Tahoe restaurants have opened Reno locations as the market there grew. DOPO moved in the opposite direction. Buchheister built the brand in Reno first, then brought it to Truckee. The Sierra Sun described it plainly: DOPO "travels the opposite direction, bringing an established Reno brand into the mountain community."
That is not a minor detail. It reflects a real shift in how experienced operators read Truckee's demand. The town is no longer only a market you expand out of once you've proven a concept somewhere else. It is a market worth expanding into. FiftyFifty is pursuing the same logic from the other direction: it is growing into Reno and Mammoth from its Truckee base, rather than retreating from it.
A gathering district requires operators who believe in the year-round draw of the location. The tenant lineup at The Old Lumberyard suggests they do.
The Grand Opening and What It Marks
The five tenants have been open since late 2025 and early 2026. The Grand Opening Celebration on Saturday, May 23, 2026 marks something different: the official public activation of Phase 1 as a complete district. The event will include live entertainment, family activities, and local vendors. Two prime commercial spaces at the Lumberyard remain available as of February 2026, which means the tenant mix is still forming — May 23 may coincide with additional announcements.
If you have been living in Truckee long enough to remember what that block looked like in 2021, the visit is worth it for the contrast alone.
What Phase 2 Adds
Phase 1 is the district's foundation. Phase 2, now targeted for 2027, is where its long-term character becomes clearer. The Sierra Sun reported in December 2025 that Phase 2 plans include a two-story event center and a two-story boutique hotel with approximately 10 to 12 rooms, along with housing and additional commercial space.
A boutique hotel on this site is a meaningful addition. A property at that scale — small enough to feel curated — would give the district a built-in guest base capable of sustaining food and beverage programming through shoulder seasons, not just peak weeks. Combined with the event center, Phase 2 turns The Old Lumberyard from a gathering district into something closer to a small neighborhood anchor.
The site sits within Truckee's Railyard Master Plan, a 75-acre redevelopment corridor the town has been planning since 2009. The Old Lumberyard is Phase 1 of what is, at full build-out, a significant extension of historic downtown Truckee's walkable footprint — not an isolated infill project.
Getting There
DOPO and FiftyFifty are at 10242 Church Street in the eastern end of historic downtown. Parking at the site is structured around transit access — the location is adjacent to a transit center and exempt from standard parking minimums under AB 2097, so arrival on foot or by transit is the intended experience. The Grand Opening on May 23 is free and open to the public.
If you have been watching Truckee's downtown evolve and want to understand what these changes mean for the broader market, The Brassie Group knows this area at that level of detail. Let's talk about what your highest possible return looks like here.
