On Thursday evening, September 17, people lined up outside the front doors at the corner of Main Street and Highway 63. The Lumber Exchange and the Hayward Foundation for Educational Enrichment were co-hosting the Hayward Area Chamber of Commerce's Business After 5, and the Sawyer County Record counted about 150 people walking in. HFEE set up displays for eight of its grants. Teke O'Reilly, the building's Community and Culture Director, poured beer and hard cider, and charcuterie boards were set out for every guest.

That night was a preview. The public grand opening is this coming Sunday, October 4. For anyone who has driven past the corner for years, it marks a return as much as an opening. For more than a century this corner held hotels, which were buildings made for people to stay and gather. After the last of them burned, the site went through a park, a planned general store and log-home show model, and a long stretch of vacancy. The Lumber Exchange is the first building since the old Hayward Inn that's designed to hold a crowd.

What Stood on This Corner Before

The Record's history of the site gives the outline. The Pion Hotel stood at the foot of Main Street in the 1800s. In the 1930s the Giblin Hotel occupied the spot, and it was later renamed the Walker Hotel. The building was known in its later years as the Hayward Inn, and a Record account of the site says it was destroyed by fire on February 3, 1998.

The middle of that table is the part most people forget. After three years as a park, footings were poured at the northwest corner of U.S. Highway 63 and Main. Tim Jenneman of Chippewa Falls was building a 32-by-46-foot, one-and-a-half-story general store facing Main, plus a 28-by-50-foot Canadian Log Homes show model. The store was to carry Louie's Finer Meats, Wisconsin cheeses and Blue Bonnet premium ice cream, with Jodi Morrow of Hayward as manager and part-owner. Its design included a turret at the street corner as a nod to the old Hayward Inn. Kevin Ruetten, then executive director of the Chamber, told the Record he was "excited to see some movement over there."

Later, the movement stopped. When construction started on the new project in 2025, the site was described as commercial space that had been vacant for 15 years. During site preparation in spring 2025, the owners salvaged materials from the existing structure so they could be reused in local projects rather than hauled away.

A Building Designed to Hold People

Carson and Amanda Kipfer announced the project on April 23, 2025, as a shared workspace and conference center at Main Street and Highway 63. Greiner Construction broke ground on the 10,000-square-foot building in summer 2025.

"Coworking" undersells what's on the floor plan. Here are the spaces the building lists, and they read more like a gathering hall than an office suite:

• The Great Room, with lounge seating, conversation corners and large tables
• The Grandstand, a second-floor outdoor deck over Main Street
• A courtyard with a fire pit
• Conference and meeting rooms with A/V and whiteboards, named for the hotels that once stood on the corner
• Private offices for members who need a door that closes
• An espresso bar on the ground floor

Groups can book the whole building, including the Grandstand, courtyard and coffee bar, for retreats or single-afternoon workshops. The owners also say they're planning monthly gatherings and networking events, some in the gathering hall and some outdoors. The building's own pitch names three audiences: Hayward locals running businesses, cabin owners who'd like to stay past the weekend, and visitors in town for a ski or bike event who need a day pass between races and a fish fry.

The meeting-room names carry the corner's history. The open house invitation says visitors can tour "meeting rooms named for the hotels that once stood on this corner." The building hasn't said which hotel names go on which doors, so Sunday's tour is a chance to find out.

Who Moved In First

Early tenants offer a clue about how the building will get used. When ground broke, two organizations had committed to long-term office leases: the Chequamegon Area Mountain Bike Association and the Sawyer County/Lac Courte Oreilles Economic Development Corp. Both are community organizations whose work brings people through their doors, so the corner starts with foot traffic built in.

The first event pointed the same way. HFEE's treasurer, Salle Beckwith, told the Record that HFEE calls itself "an organization with no walls," so it needed a host for Business After 5. She and board member Brianna McKenzie met with Carson Kipfer and Teke O'Reilly in July, and the Lumber Exchange agreed to open early for the event. At the same event, Cookie Bonicatto told the Record that this year's golf outing raised close to $70,000 for educational enrichment in the Hayward Community School District.

Guests' comments to the Record were warm. Debbi and Guy Houston of Coop's Pizza said, "My God, it's so beautiful in here. I love it." Lynn Melton of Lynn's Custom Meats & Catering called it "beautiful, very unique." Mindy Simons, executive director of the Hayward Lakes Visitors & Convention Bureau, called it "a beautiful addition to Main Street." A guest described it as "both homey and opulent."

Opening Weekend, and What Else Is Going On

The schedule took a while to settle. The 2025 groundbreaking report from REBusinessOnline projected a summer 2026 opening, and a June 2026 TV report from Northern News Now expected a public opening in August. Both dates have since been replaced by the current plan. Here's how the weekend lines up, according to the Lumber Exchange, and it shares Saturday with two other events:

1. Saturday, October 3. The Lumber Exchange holds a private, invitation-only ribbon-cutting with the crews, partners and founding members. In Stone Lake, the 48th annual Cranberry Festival brings more than 300 vendors, with the parade at 1 p.m. and the Cranberry Krate Derby at 3:30 p.m. In the evening, The Park Center screens the Manhattan Short Film Festival from 7 to 9 p.m.
2. Sunday, October 4, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The free community open house. No RSVP is needed. Enter through the front doors on Main Street, and use street or public parking nearby. The Cranberry Festival's 5K runs the same day.
3. Week of October 5. Coworking opens.
4. October 31. Founding memberships close. Members who join by then lock in their rate for as long as they stay members and get their names on the founders' plaque in the Great Room. That night The Park Center shows Rocky Horror Picture Show from 7 to 9 p.m.
5. First week of November. The espresso bar opens.

The Park Center's November calendar also follows the new building's first month. Them Coulee Boys play November 7, Classic Ladies of Country with Joyann Parker is November 14, and the Chamber Series Holiday Extravaganza is November 21, all at 7 p.m.

The Turret, Then and Now

When Tim Jenneman planned his general store, he gave it a corner turret "reminiscent of the former Hayward Inn." That was a builder looking back at the hotel he couldn't replace. The Kipfers took the opposite approach. They built a room big enough for 150 people on a Thursday night, a deck where people can stand above Main Street, and meeting rooms named for the hotels that once stood here. The open house runs Sunday from 11 to 2, and the front doors face Main.

Here at McKinney Realty, part of loving the Northwoods is watching corners like this one come back to life, and we'd be glad to say hello on Main Street this Sunday. If seeing the foot of Main lit up again has you thinking about staying past the weekend, or about owning a cabin where you could, we're happy to talk it through over coffee once the espresso bar opens in November.