Tuli Lodge Turns Seattle's Pier 62 Into a Year-Round Sauna Community Hub

Two wood-fired saunas sitting on a Seattle pier, arranged around fire pits and cold plunge tubs with Elliott Bay stretching out in front of you: that's what Hannah Goldstein built when she brought Tuli Lodge to Pier 62 this past winter. The setup is exactly what it sounds like and nothing more precious than that, which is the whole point.

Goldstein conceived the idea during a 2023 trip to Norway and came home wanting to build something affordable in Seattle that centered on social connection rather than spa luxury. The result is a Nordic-inspired social sauna club that describes its own vibe as "beer garden energy, but with wood-fired saunas and cold plunges instead of brews." The name is Finnish: "tuli" means fire.

The Pier 62 activation soft-launched on November 1 and ran through April 30, six months in total, every day except Tuesday. Two saunas, each holding up to ten people, were arranged on the pier alongside fire pits, chairs, and optional ice-cold plunge tubs. Sessions ran in one-hour blocks. Guests set their own rotation: sweat, plunge, relax, repeat. The cold plunge was always optional, though anyone familiar with contrast therapy knows the plunge is the part you end up talking about afterward.

Tuli's partnership with Friends of Waterfront Park, the nonprofit managing Pier 62, was central to the whole operation. "We are super lucky to be partnered with Friends of Waterfront Park, the nonprofit that manages this pier," Goldstein said. "And we have this amazing opportunity to do this collaboration because we have a very similar mission of bringing people together in this beautiful outdoor space."

The location gave sessions a specific kind of backdrop: guests could watch the sunset over Elliott Bay or catch sunrise behind the downtown Seattle skyline, depending on when they booked. Bookings opened on a rolling two-week-in-advance basis, and the site described groups using it for birthdays, bachelorette parties, pre-night-out warmups, and plain old weekday decompression.

What Goldstein observed over those six months was consistent. "Sometimes people are coming in in a bad mood," she said. "But I have never once, and I'm not exaggerating, I have never once seen anyone leave Tuli in a bad mood. Everyone leaves with a smile on their face."

For a city with a well-documented reputation for social insularity, that's not a small claim. The "Seattle Freeze" is a real cultural phenomenon to anyone who's lived here, and Tuli's design specifically pushed against it: guests are encouraged to start spontaneous conversations with strangers, share sauna space with ten people they've never met, and linger around fire pits between rounds. The saunas are not separated by gender, and the format, one hour, communal, no frills, makes standing off in a corner feel more awkward than just talking to the person across from you.

Practical logistics: bring your own towel (two is the recommendation), bring a water bottle, and wear a bathing suit. Tuli provides the saunas, the cold plunges, and the laid-back atmosphere. Additional saunas may be added in future configurations, and the activation's success on Pier 62 raises the question of whether what started as a winter pop-up has a longer future on the Seattle waterfront.