(Image: The Rhino Room)

When a Capitol Hill nightlife spot is “temporarily closed” for over a month, the website goes dead, and the ownership go quiet, it might be time for a new adverb.

A year after its 10-year anniversary in Pike/Pine, The Rhino Room hasn’t opened for its typical weekend party schedule and it isn’t clear when the disco ball at 11th and Pine might start spinning again.

Last year, CHS celebrated the tough skin of the club as the venture marked a decade of nightlife having endured the explosive redevelopment of Pike/Pine, the pandemic, and the weeks of CHOP and SPD turmoil in the streets outside the venue in 2020.

Patric Gabre-Kidan, one of the few Black business owners in Capitol Hill’s nightlife scene, kicked off the project in 2013, when a group of friends turned business partners collaborated to build the new hotspot.

A decade later, the team had changed with Gabre-Kidan still at the center with business partners Jonathan Bishop and Jacob Mihailides stoking the party of a Rhino Room that had refined its approach with limited weekend openings while also expanding the business.  In 2018, CHS reported on the Now or Never debut, the Rhino Room’s sister bar that operated in the basement beneath the club’s deco street level.

The original Rhino Room crew in 2013 (Image: CHS)

The Rhino Room’s home building has seen a few things, too.

The Stranger, formerly above the club in the historic White Motor Company building at the corner of 11th and Pine, moved out in 2020. Value Village is gone. Even the street’s Capitol Hill WeWork came and went in the Rhino Room’s lifetime.

The Rhino Room’s terra cotta-faced building endures. Efforts from property owner Legacy Commercial to upgrade the old building under the city’s preservation guidelines in hopes of attracting new office tenants above the Rhino Room space have continued. Those office floors still sit empty.

An early component of Seattle’s REI history, the prominent terra cotta-faced building at 11th and Pine has stood at the corner since 1918.

Not to start rumors or anything but a recently completed city permit to overhaul the building’s elevator was filed this fall with the city listing The Stranger as a contact. Area businesses surely wouldn’t mind the return of the new Stranger. But the paperwork only seems to be a remnant of past occupancy — for now.

Meanwhile, there is nothing certain about the Rhino Room’s next steps. Ownership of the club has not responded to social media, email, or phone messages from CHS and therhinoroom.com now shows the dreaded GoDaddy domain sales pitch after weeks of quiet weekends for the club.

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