Engine 15 Brewing @ Myrtle Ave. and Beaver St.

[DDC]

Maybe the most telling line in the story:

Scremin said he had to double the brewing capacity within the first year, as has every other brewery in Jacksonville.

If you brew it, they will come 

[Non-RedNeck Westsider]

I look forward to the day when our city officials figure out how to embrace and support our local brewing scene.

Then, as my 3 year old would say, we would kick infinity butt!

Don't sweat it Ben.  Most of your future city officials are probably enjoying a pint in your taproom as you type. 

The hope is that our current city officials won't find a way to completely f^<% it up before then. 

[boldbeanzack]

Great news!

[Dog Walker]

That neighborhood needs something exactly like this to start the revival.  All of those neat old warehouses are just waiting for re-purposing.

[Captain Zissou]

Those of you who are criticizing location need to get out more. 

I feel like this is directed at me. I wasn't hating on the location, I just thought it was unexpected. I was one of the biggest supporters of ben's idea to develop the site on forest street, and I've been to many of the breweries you mentioned. Breweries don't need a TON of square footage to be able to produce a lot of beer. They do, however, need high ceilings. For example, Great Divide brewery put out 20,000 barrels in 2010 from a brewery that is just slightly larger than intuition is now, but it has higher ceilings. The production area of Sweetwater wasn't that big before their expansion, but their high ceilings allowed for huge tanks.

I imagine that at one time, La Villa, Commodore Point, and other parts of DT had buildings of 20,000 square feet with high ceilings that could house a brewery today if they were kept intact. We have bulldozed much of our building stock that could have met this need.

[thelakelander]

Yeah, at one point we had just as many as any other place.  However, we made sure we eliminated that blight!

[fieldafm]

does the Strip District in Pittsburgh have a brewery?

There is a small growler booth inside thePublic Market from East End (I have a picture of it that I can upload later).  A similar setup would be awesome once the Jacksonville Farmers Market gets it's indoor facility up and running.

A very boring 13 minute walk away (boring b/c you walk right through an industrial area with nothing interesting to see) there is the Church Brew Works housed in a converted church in the re-emerging Lawrencville neighborhood.

[fieldafm]

As the underutilized spaces are cleaned up and occupied, the area won't seem as scary as it is today to some.  Then riding the S-Line Greenway will start to make sense to a lot of people. One of the benefits of being ignored by most downtown advocates and civil leaders for decades is that this area still has a lot of old funky affordable spaces still standing.

Brooklyn Brewery started in the sketchiest of all sketch places... now the Williamsburg neighborhood is the hipster center of the world.

In South Boston, Shipyards Brewing Company opened up a brewery in a wharehouse next to what is basically the Boston equivalent of Beaver Street Fisheries... now there are all sorts of mixed use buildings going up next door and they have a booming Tech District in the once abandoned wharehouses just a short walk away.

[Tacachale]

I spoke to some folks over at Aardwolf last night who expressed some skepticism about this. My position is that someone has to serve the pioneer role if we're ever going to revitalize these areas. These kinds of projects have worked all over the country and our other breweries have proven it works here too.

[Dog Walker]

That old picture of the Crane building makes you want to cry for what is gone and neglected.

[thelakelander]

Here's another shot of it.....