Former summer theater will be torn down

The building that hosted the Red Barn Theater is dilapidated, not useable.

The former Red Barn Theater, 3657 63rd St., Laketown Township, on Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2025. The barn is facing west.

The final curtain call for a barn that hosted summer plays for almost 50 years is coming in 2026. The former Red Barn Theater in Laketown Township is expected to be demolished and replaced with an extension of the existing event venue.

The barn at 3657 63rd St. at the corner of Blue Star Highway is owned by the Grant Collection LLC that opened the adjoining Emerson Lounge in January 2025.

The Emerson Lounge is an exclusive event venue for weddings, corporate events, rehearsal dinners and other celebrations, according to the company’s website. The Grant Collection also owns the Ivy House in Saugatuck and Port 393 in Holland.

The Laketown Township site was previously home to Guardian Brewery, which closed in 2024.

The former Red Barn Theater, 3657 63rd St., Laketown Township, on Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2025. The barn is facing west. The addition with the door and two windows (center is a bulletin board for playbills) is where tickets were sold.

The owners of the Emerson Lounge are proposing removing the barn that housed the former theater but keeping the adjoining silo. A new structure will be built for enhancement of the event venue.

“The barn has been determined to be unoccupiable in its current condition and is also past the point of being reasonably salvageable for the intended use,” the company wrote in an Oct. 28, 2025, memo to the Laketown Township Zoning Board of Appeals.

On Dec. 17, the zoning board approved a dimensional variance request for the proposed building for reduced setbacks from neighboring property.

Plans for the new structure must still go before the township planning commission. No date for demolition has been set, though spring is possible.

The back of the Red Barn Theater from the courtyard of the Emerson Lounge, 3657 63rd St., Laketown Township, on Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2025.
The Red Barn Theater, 3657 63rd St., in June 2011.
The silo at the former Red Barn Theater, 3657 63rd St., Laketown Township, on Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2025.

About the Red Barn

The Red Barn Playhouse was founded by James Webster in 1948 in Douglas, according to a May 26, 1988, article in the Saugatuck Commercial Record newspaper. In 1953, Webster purchased the current site which was part of the Belvedere Estate. The barn was built in 1921.

“The barn was filled with livestock and corn at the time of purchase,” the article said. “By the spring of 1954, however, he had converted it into the present Red Barn and opened it in June of that year.”

The theater went through several ownership changes and was at one point enlarged to hold 500 people.

The theater closed in 2002, according to the Saugatuck-Douglas History Center. It was an antique store before becoming the brewery in 2017.

A chandelier at the former Red Barn Theater, 3657 63rd St., Laketown Township, on Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2025.
Seats inside the former Red Barn Theater, 3657 63rd St., Laketown Township, on Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2025.