NEDERLAND — From the opening of Brightwood Music in 2008, founder Doug Armitage estimates he had built up $400,000 worth of instruments, tools, and accessories for the business.
On October 9, 2025, the Lakewood Fire burned it down, along with nearly 20 other businesses in the Caribou Village Shopping Center.
“Everything went up in the fire,” says Armitage, also known as Doug Brightwood around town. “When I got home, I had one guitar that was sitting in my bedroom, and everything else was gone.”
Brightwood had already planned to move to a new location, but had not begun the process before the sudden blaze destroyed everything, including the entire customer database.
While they had secured their new location beforehand, losing their inventory still essentially meant starting from scratch.
“It’s a difficult thing to even begin to try and explain to people what it’s like going through that and starting over with essentially zero,” says Armitage.
Thus began the process of beginning anew in the new location, a space in the community’s next shopping hub, The Vault. This hub, hosted in the former Citywide Bank building, hosts seven units, with Brightwood claiming a space early.
“They had already done at least a year and a half’s worth of work,” says Armitage on The Vault, which announced pre-leasing in July 2025. “I was the first person in, and boy, it was empty, and it was echoey.”
From there, Armitage soundproofed the Brightwood space, now housed in two of The Vault’s seven units, and started restocking. With copies of his financial books and pictures from across the community of the store’s interior, he could verify the majority of the inventory for insurance purposes.
“You just don’t realize what a variety you have until it’s all gone,” says Armitage of the restock process. “You try to reorder it, and it starts to really add up and take a lot of space. It’s an interesting thing to try and decide where to go from here with a lot of things.”
Still, Brightwood has continued the restocking process and is now fully open in The Vault. Armitage appreciates the community for their fervent support for Brightwood and for all of the local businesses affected by the fire.
While this new chapter is bittersweet for many, he is thrilled to help welcome the community into the final hub and hopes to spread the word about The Vault and encourage foot traffic as it prepares for opening.
“The only question I have at that point is, are we gonna have enough parking?” says Armitage. “But that’s kind of a good problem to have.”
The Vault, located at 26 Peak to Peak Highway in Nederland, celebrates its opening weekend from Friday, May 15 to Sunday, May 17, 2026. For more information, follow The Vault Nederland on Facebook or email thevaultned@gmail.com.
Editor's note: Doug Armitage co-owns Brightwood Music with his wife, Barbara Hardt, editor-in-chief of The Mountain-Ear.
