Spotlight Brewing opens at Hollywood Q, adds new chapter to Portland beer site

Spotlight Brewing opened April 10 at 4035 NE Sandy Blvd. inside Hollywood Q in Portland’s Hollywood District, giving the building at one of Northeast Portland’s most brewery-heavy corners a fresh start. The complex is open Monday through Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., and the pitch is bigger than a taproom: beer sits alongside local food pods and modern office suites in a redevelopment built around the neighborhood’s Hollywood name and film-era identity.

That address has seen plenty of turnover before Spotlight arrived. The building previously housed Old World Pub & Brewery, Laurelwood Brewing, Columbia River Brewing and Pono Brew Labs, which opened there in 2022 after the space had sat vacant for nearly three years. Laurelwood’s last remaining Northeast Portland pub later closed in 2023, adding to the sense that this corner had become a difficult place for a brewery to hold for long. For Portland beer watchers, that history is the backdrop to Spotlight’s debut and the reason this opening feels like more than another new tap list.

Spotlight is not a one-off startup trying its luck in a complicated lease. It is part of the broader Zoiglhaus Brewing family, with brewmaster Alan Taylor associated with the group’s brands, including Ascendant Beer Co. and Norte Brewing Co. in Portland, plus Ponderosa Brewing Co. and Ponderosa Spirits in New Mexico. Brewing operations at Spotlight are led by Kevin Hanny, whose resume includes time at Migration Brewing, Trap Door Brewing and Steeplejack Brewing. That background points to a program that aims to land between neighborhood-friendly and technically sharp, with a pub setting that still takes beer seriously.

Hollywood Q’s own framing makes clear that Spotlight is just one piece of the project. The site is built around a food hall and office suites, with earlier planning describing 7 to 8 indoor food carts on the ground floor. It is a very different model from the standalone brewpubs that came before it at 4035 NE Sandy Blvd., and that may be the real test here. Instead of relying on beer alone to pull people in, Spotlight is part of a wider destination where lunch, a pint and a workday coffee run can all happen under the same roof.

That broader footprint matters in Portland’s current brewery climate, where old taproom formulas have become harder to sustain. Spotlight’s opening gives the Hollywood District another anchor and turns a long-complicated brewing address into a live experiment in how beer, food and mixed-use development can share the same building without repeating the past.