There is a building on Old Belfair Highway that most of us have driven past a hundred times — tucked just off Highway 3, easy to miss if you’re rushing toward the Belfair Town Center. But if you stop and walk in on a Monday or Tuesday morning between 10 and noon, you’ll find live music already playing and a salad bar set up on a pay-what-you-can basis. That’s The HUB, and it has been the unofficial living room of North Mason County for 25 years.
The organization was founded in 2001 as a 501(c)(3) under a simple mission: support independent living for our senior and disabled neighbors. For the first 15 years, The HUB operated as a mobile, volunteer-driven service network — rides to appointments, help with errands, a free medical lending library, and a food commodities program for seniors. All of it run by neighbors helping neighbors.
In 2016, the dream got a building. Les and Betty Krueger offered matching funds to help purchase land on Old Belfair Highway, and our community rallied to raise the rest, funding the first phase of a purpose-built senior center. The name is an acronym — Hospitality, Unity, and Belonging — but it has also just become the plain-English word for what happens there. The HUB is where people gather.
Today, the center at 111 NE Old Belfair Hwy runs a packed calendar any given week. Monday and Tuesday mornings bring free live music open to the whole community — not just seniors. Family BINGO lands on the first Friday of every month. Fitness classes, painting, writing workshops, cooking classes, and health events fill out the rest. The Great Room and commercial kitchen are available for community rentals and private fundraisers.
The HUB Shop — or as the staff calls it, Sales Helping Other People — operates its own full schedule: Monday through Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. It’s a thrift store where proceeds cycle back into HUB programs. Generations of Belfair families have donated furniture, clothes, and household goods here, and picked up unexpected finds in return.
The Neighbors Helping Neighbors program remains the quiet backbone of the whole operation. It’s not glamorous: rides to doctors, help with grocery runs, a borrowed wheelchair or walker when you need one. But it is how The HUB’s original 2001 mission still shows up in real, daily form for people who would otherwise navigate North Mason without much support.
If you have never been inside — or if it’s been a while — the center is open Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The phone is (360) 275-0535. Find The HUB at 111 NE Old Belfair Hwy, on the left-hand side of Old Belfair Highway coming from downtown Belfair, just past where the road bends away from Highway 3.
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