Tacoma company renowned for building luxury yacht interiors closing shop
At some point, Paul Birkey says, he is going to write a book.
“My story has just been a crazy ride up to now,” he told The News Tribune this week as he wound down operations of his yacht-interior building shop, Belina Interiors, in Tacoma. “It’s really been a chain of weird, lucky things that happened.”
Tacoma might not be the first city that comes to mind when it comes to luxury yacht life, yet Birkey was able to make an impressive go of it for quite some time.
Now, after nearly four decades, the time has come for him to close shop as what he describes as its “golden age of the superyacht” floats into the past.
According to an August 2019 report in Forbes, superyachts aren’t a specific make or model but represent the largest and most expensive of yachts. They can range from 79 feet to more than 590 feet long.
Birkey, originally from Wyoming, said the path to his work started with a Seattle boatyard, made its way to Tacoma and eventually led to him launching his own business in 1982. It first was run out of his garage but later to moved to his current metal shop at 4713 S. Washington St. and a main interior cabinet workshop building at 4540 S. Adams St.
“We built yacht interiors for decades and kind of rode the wave,” he said. “The industry has changed and has gotten progressively harder to keep going.
“I made decision to close shop. We had a great run with more than 100 people working here at various times.”
Birkey’s business was unique in the area. Belina’s online gallery alone offered a jaw-dropping dreamscape of mansionlike interiors for yachts with ornate staircases, wood-paneled dens and elaborate bars complete with jewel-laden details in various room trims and lights rivaling any multimillion-dollar home.
All that work took lots of people to make it happen.
“At the time of closing, we had 60 employees, but were often over 100 strong, ordinary people doing remarkable things,” he said.
Their work was noted internationally. In a 2013 profile, Greg Ward, chief executive of Citadel Yachts in Tacoma, told The News Tribune: “They’re probably one of the, if not the best, in North America, one of the best in the world. They are very well managed, and the quality of their product is second to none.”
Before ending operations, Belina hosted a job fair for its remaining workforce of about 60. Most have landed other jobs, Birkey said.
For himself, he’s going to continue to work with the Tacoma Community Boat Builders, a nonprofit wooden boat building program he started four years ago to offer training in work skills for at-risk youth, a program hundreds of kids so far have participated in.
That program, profiled by The News Tribune in 2015, has given him a way to give back to the city where he has so much history.
He told The News Tribune at that time, “Tacoma’s of a scale that it still feels like a community. I love that about it.”
At this point, he has no plans to move away.
“I live 15 minutes from the shop,” he said this week. “We’re pretty much ensconced here.”
There’s also that book to write.
As for superyachts, who will do the interior work now for your floating mansion?
“That’s a good question,” Birkey said. “I don’t really know.”
