Chapman’s Brewing closes suddenly at Electric Works, hints at possible return

Chapman’s Brewing Company pulled the plug on its Electric Works taproom with no warning window, and that abrupt stop says plenty about how hard it is to keep a small brewery alive inside a mixed-use redevelopment. The company said on Monday, May 11, 2026, that it was shutting down effective immediately after 14 years in business, citing financial hardships and operating costs that had become unsustainable.

The surprise stung because Chapman’s had told customers just two days earlier, on May 9, that the storefront was temporarily closed for renovations and would reopen. Instead, the company’s Facebook post shifted from a refresh to a shutdown, while still hinting at future plans without saying whether a brewery would be part of them. One message came through clearly: staff were central to the operation, and Chapman’s thanked employees, customers, mug club members, musicians, vendors, and supporters, calling the staff “the heart of this place.”

The closure leaves behind more than a bar and a tank room. Chapman’s Electric Works operation opened in 2024 as the company’s lone location, after earlier taprooms in Angola, Columbia City, Wabash, Huntington, and Fort Wayne International Airport all closed. The Fort Wayne site was built as a serious production and hospitality space, with a 10-barrel brewhouse, more than 15,000 square feet, a kitchen, and rental seating for up to 50 people. It also served as Chapman’s headquarters and R&D base, so the shutdown removes not just a taproom, but the brewery’s operational anchor.

That scale makes the business case easy to understand and hard to solve. A 10-bbl system and a 15,000-square-foot footprint demand steady traffic, healthy pours, food sales, and events to cover the overhead. Inside a district like Electric Works, the brewery also depended on the foot traffic and tenant mix around it, which can change fast when a redevelopment project keeps evolving. Electric Works said it would partner with a new, proven restaurant group that would bring a new concept to the space in the fall, while Union Street Market continues to navigate new management operators and shifts among vendors.

Chapman’s was founded in 2012 by Scott Fergusson, who studied engineering at Trine University and later earned an MBA from Notre Dame. After 14 years and a string of closed locations, the immediate shutdown at Electric Works reads less like a routine reset than a warning flare for any brewery trying to make the taproom, the kitchen, and the lease all work at once.