Hard for Brooklyn Brewery to Find a New Brooklyn Home

Photograph of the Brooklyn Brewery in Williamsburg by wallyg on Flickr

The Brooklyn Brewery is facing a dilemma. The NY Times explains the company has come up against the expensive real estate market:

[Brooklyn Brewery President Steve] Hindy and his partners are willing to spend $15 million for a bigger brewery that would employ at least twice as many workers as he has now and would have a beer garden where customers could sample his growing roster of specialty brews. But after four years of searching and two failed bids to be included in redevelopment projects in Red Hook and Carroll Gardens, they have not found a suitable building in the borough at a feasible price.

“We are the Brooklyn Brewery, and we want to be in Brooklyn,” said Mr. Hindy, who often bicycles to work from his home in Park Slope. “If we can’t find a place, then who can? We’re about as perfect an example of light manufacturing as you can get.”

Hindy is also upset the rezoning of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, which he initially supported, "went too far by allowing a variety of nonindustrial uses of land in areas that are labeled industrial business zones"--which is why some property owners are holding out to create condos, versus offer them to businesses.

Though much of Brooklyn Brewery's beer is bottled in Utica, Hindy says he'd at least double the Williamsburg workforce (the brewery opened in 1996) and local production would grow from 12,000 to 40,000 barrels/year. Hindy is hoping city officials can step up and help him keep the brewery--and its jobs--in Brooklyn, but added, "Once you name your company Brooklyn Brewery, you kind of take away the threat of moving to New Jersey." And last year, Hindy spoke to the Sun and described other ideas for expansion, like making the brand a success in...Manhattan.

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By Jen Chung in News on July 20, 2008 5:19 PM

Comments [rss]

dadoc

Jeez Bornbrednewyorker, ya don't like beer, ya don't like breweries, don't like smokes, ya get pissed about hot chicks on stilts. Would you be so kind as to provide a list of what you DO think is OK? It'll help us as to what we post & comment about. To each their own, & hope you enjoy stuff, whatever it is! (I'm somehow having a weird, creepy feeling that I'm responding to Sister Thomas Aquin, my seventh grade teacher @ OLPH who liked nothing.) Sr. TA, is that you? Man, I'm getting creeped.

Enjoy, BBNY, whatever your thing.

Dadoc

bornbrednewyorker

tsol the same could be said for people who work for cigarette companies. Sorry but alcohol isn't a necessity.

sarahlucy

yesss, come to bed stuy! we do love our beer here (40s AND your standard 12 oz, thank you very much)

Think2wice

Keep a small, token, folksy-looking brewery in Williamsburg and put your main operations in mega-plants around the country and go Budweiser/Miller/Duff on everybody's ass. The free market marches on.

dgm

Why dont they take this place on North 7th and North 6th in Williamsburg? It is in their price range. I'd rather have them as neighbors that a 14 story hotel.

http://www.greinermaltz.com/pages/Flyer.aspx?TableName=[Exclusive%20Properties]&ID=620

markedman

It's poetic in that Hindy has supported all of this new Brooklyn overdevelopment, Ratner and Atlantic Yards, and all of the Williamsburg/Greenpoint rezoning and it has come around to bite him in the ass.

Be careful what you ask for!

Send Brooklyn Brewery to Jersey, we've got Sixpoints.

whantmoore

He is a victim of his own success now that were is located is hip of course you will have a increase in property value.

tsol

"It's beer. Who cares"

It's jobs, payrolls, and and the resulting tax revenues used by the city and the state to enrich their employee pensions.

JenChungsBaby

He bikes to work from Park Slope? Let him rot.

bornbrednewyorker

It's beer. Who cares? It's not as if beer is enriching peoples lives in any way other than self medication.

Blairy Blair

Word. BKLN can't even take care of its own.

Snoopy

LOL

Snoopy

Obviously by the way you spell.

matty

i didn't read this article but I love brooklyn lager...though today I am a drinking Botsont's sams adams summer ale, I like both beers and buy both frequently...

kcin122

theres a few buildings in crown heights that as far as I know have nothing in them which used to brew.

not sure how to get a lease on that junk tho.

Jen Chung

@Peter, I think Hindy likes having the business near his home and keeping jobs in the borough.

Snoopy

Can you just pee over all this? Most of the beer is bottled in Utica, New York? Isn't that the same place that use to bottle A&P's quarts?

Do they ship up tank loads to Utica to bottle this exclusive brew?

There's a lot of real estate in Bed Stuy (which is in Brooklyn) for a brewery, but unfortunately they have to be bottled in forties.

Peter

Hindy is hoping city officials can step up and help him keep the brewery--and its jobs--in Brooklyn, but added, "Once you name your company Brooklyn Brewery, you kind of take away the threat of moving to New Jersey."

Actually, Hindy could move all operations to New Jersey or elsewhere while keeping the company's headquarters - which could be just a few people - in rented office space in Brooklyn, and the company name would not be inaccurate. City officials could be very wrong if they negotiate with the company under the assumption that relocation won't happen.