Council to debate brewpub

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This article was published 17/06/2013 (4740 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

City administration is serving up a cold pint of rejection to a group who wants to turn the old Central Fire Station into a brewpub — but the pub’s proponents aren’t crying in their beers just yet.

Tonight, a report will recommend Brandon city council reject plans to open the Brewtinerie and start accepting other business proposals for the 102-year-old building.

The plan is to establish a combination brewpub and full-service restaurant specializing in poutine on the main floor, while leaving the second and third levels open to possible office spaces, tenants, or studio space.

The proposal, filed in April 2012, is based on a co-operative business model, however, the steering committee has been waiting to get approval from the city to purchase the fire hall before it officially incorporates and starts selling memberships or accepting financial pledges before the city outlines any necessary requirements.

It appears the risk-averse evaluation committee isn’t convinced the crowd-sourced plan is secure enough.

“The actual formation of the co-operative has not been undertaken and the proponent did not include any market research to demonstrate the viability of achieving the projected shares stated,” the recommendation reads.

Grant Hamilton, the main proponent behind the pub proposal, said he’s received hundreds of emails of support in the last year and still believes the co-op model is a good one.

Since the business doesn’t technically exist yet, the city’s evaluation committee concluded it simply remains an idea with no significant financial backing.

If tonight’s meeting goes south for the co-op, it’ll be time to re-group and decide if they need to drop the co-op business model, or if they should pursue another building in town.

From the outset, Hamilton had his heart set on saving the historic fire hall from entering into a derelict state, but said if council agrees with administration tonight, it might be time to search for another spot downtown.

“I went into this from the aspect of trying to save the fire hall and the brewpub was a means to that end, but maybe now we look at re-grouping and seeing if there’s another place where we can put a brewpub because I think a lot of people were excited about that idea as well,” Hamilton said.

He argues, however, there are very few venues that offer the “unique set” of features the fire hall has —it’s set back from the street to accommodate a large south-facing patio and has a large footprint to house a brewery, all while attracting more people to the downtown’s relatively quiet east end.

In the lone bid for the building filed to the city last April, it proposed to purchase the fire hall, appraised at $370,000, for $1 and forecasted the project to cost $3.3 million to open the doors, of which a vast majority would go to bring the interior up to code and sprucing up the facade.

Hamilton said he believes the costly renovations imposed by the city doesn’t fit with the idea of saving the building and adds an enormous financial burden to any business that wants to move in.

The co-op model grew from a Brandon Sun blog post written by Hamilton, the newspaper’s internet co-ordinator, and while he likes the model, if it means finding more financial security in a group of wealthy backers, the group might be willing to go in another direction.

“If there are 10 or 12 people in this community who have deep pockets that are willing to kick in a half a million dollars, we could get a fair amount of financing from financial institutions as well,” he said. “If they want to do this as a limited liability partnership of some kind, then we’ll definitely chat.”

While the group will be sitting in the chambers tonight with some anxiety, Hamilton said it’s merely a stumbling block for the project, which is still in its fermenting stages and the group plans to forge ahead.

In Kenora, it took three years for very similar proposal to become a reality.

Taras Manzie, owner of Lake of the Woods Brewing Company, is about to open the doors of decommissioned fire hall turned brewpub in the heart of Kenora in the next few weeks.

Sound familiar?

Manzie, however, brought substantial restaurant experience to the council table and has a successful track record of dealing with heritage buildings when Kenora city council gave the nod to go ahead with his plan.

“So we’ve had experience with the construction process and that may have been part of their decision to go ahead with our proposal,” Manzie told the Sun. “Maybe that was the hanging of their hat on some of that experience with starting the business from scratch.”

Manzie also has past experience in commercial lending and he said in any project, especially risky ones, the more equity a proposal can bring to the table, the better.

“It did take eight to 10 months to negotiate the sale contract,” Manzie said. “It wasn’t easy for us to get to the point where we’re at.”

Lake of the Woods Brewing Company is set to turn on its taps in the coming weeks after spending years of work to restore Kenora’s old fire hall.

Meanwhile, Mayor Shari Decter Hirst said she expects there to be healthy debate in the council chambers tonight and made it clear council could very well go against administration’s recommendations.

“We need to drill down and get a bit of clarification,” she said regarding the report. “We’ve got lots more information that we’re going to need to get beyond just the three or four pages that’s in the recommendation from administration.”

The fate of the fire hall has been a talking point for Decter Hirst since before she was elected and said she’s a “huge fan” of any tourism opportunities.

“An old building that sits empty deteriorates quickly and so if we’re going to go forward, let’s move forward, and if we’re not going forward, lets make some decisions and move in a different direction.”

» gbruce@brandonsun.com