HomeMy WebLinkAboutFORT COLLINS BREWERY - PDP - 32-08 - MEDIA - CORRESPONDENCENov. 7-20,2008 1 www.businessreportdailycom The Northern Colorado Business Report 129
FC BREWERY, from i
dose proximity to Odell Brewing Co., with
an expansion under way just west on
Lincoln Avenue, and local industry leader
New Belgium Brewing Co. on nearby
Linden Street "It's a big step for us. We're in
10,000 square feet now and this will get us
into 30,000 square feet"
The brewers have enlisted Fort Collins
architect Olexa Tkachenko of Preview
Architecture + Planning LLC and are close
to selecting a builder for both projects with
a construction timetable aimed at a July
completion.
Tom Peters and his wife, Jan, bought
Fort Collins Brewery in 2004 from a part-
nership of two other couples and have
grown the business to 7,500 barrels annual-
ly directed at a 20-state market. That's not
enough production to land FCB among the
nation's top 50 craft brewers, but Tina
Peters said the family hopes to double the
output after the new brewery opens.
Industry growth ahead
"We're seeing tremendous growth in the
next two years," she said. "We would like to
get into the 15,000-barrel range."
To put that figure in perspective, New
Belgium's 2007 expansion gives it the
capacity to produce $50,000 barrels, and the
company will ship almost 500,000 this year.
Odell, the region's second -ranked brewer,
produced 40,000 barrels last year.
The Fort Collins Brewery expansion will
include a 4,000-square-foot restaurant that
Tina Peters and her husband, Jake
Eatherton, will run. Floor -to -ceiling glass
walls will offer views of the brewing opera-
tion.
"We're still very much in the planning
stages," she said. "But we're thinking it will
have a South -by -Southwest feeling, with the
focus on the food."
A separate tasting room will offer visi-
tors samplings of FCB's Z lager, Rocky
Mountain IPA, Chocolate Stout, Retro Red
ale, Major Tom's pomegranate -wheat ale
and Kidd lager. A community room that
will accommodate groups of 50 is also
included in the plan.
Tom Peters said the 31,000-square-foot
mixed -use project would combine retail,
office and housing units in a four-story
building just west of the new brewery.
Mixed -use market
"My excitement with this project really is
about the mixed -use building," he said. "It's
something that we really see a market for."
Peters recruited Tkachenko after seeing
his design work at the Prospect neighbor-
hood in Longmont, one of the region's
most successful examples of the New
Urbanist architectural style.
The design for the new brewery and
mixed -use project derives from Northern
Colorado's agricultural heritage,
Tkachenko said.
"We like to build off the local vemacu-
lar, he said. "Here, it's the agrarian roots
that the cities in this region have.
Almost 9,000 square feet of first -floor
retail space in the mixed -use building will
be topped by 6,000 square feet of office
space and 10 loft -style apartments on the
second and third floors, with two three -
bedroom penthouse units on the fourth
floor.
Residential units will range from 600
square feet for one -bedroom units to 2,400
square feet for each of the three -bedroom
units.
Tina Peters said a bicycle dealer and bak-
CourrW Preview Amhik m+Pluming LLC
MARKET-DRIVEN — A four-story retail, office and residential building just west of the new brewery will add
another 31,000 square feet of space to the Fort Collins Brewery project.
cry might be good fits for the retail space. said the project would fulfill a goal of
All of that will be determined by where the expanding the Old Town district along
market's headed," she said. Lincoln Avenue.
Fort Collins senior planner Anne Aspen, "This is a great project; she said. "It's a
who has been working with the Peters fam- homegrown business, and the architecture
ily during the development review process, is just dead -on. It will be fun to see.'
'$rewery
Triangle'
expands
New project on
tap soon for Fort
Collins Brewery
By Tom Hacker
thacker@ncbr.com
years ago. Orr Energy LLC now has 13 '
FORT COLLINS — A vibrant,
wells on land which Orr both owns and
craft -brewing industry that has
holds the mineral rights to
become a key economic sector in
Mcha4A War
Fort Collins will take another`step
Noeln c'&,.d.Bwi.n Wpo.i -
forward when Fort Collins Brewery
breaks ground on a new brewery
and adjacent mixed -use project
when Orr, owner of Orr Land Co. in
His timing could not have been
near downtown.
o• s
Greeley, decided to diversify into oil
better.
Brewery owner Tom Peters and
and gas the price of oil was about
The price of oil just kept rising,
his daughter, Tina Peters, are steer-
,yells
$70 per barrel. That was more than
reaching a peak last July at more
ing the projects through a city
Weld
three times what it sold for just four
than $140 per barrel. "We've been
development review process and
n
years earlier.
fortunate in the timing of it," Orr
hope to begin construction in
With years of experience dealing
said with some understatement.
January on the northwest corner of
with land and mineral rights issues,
Falling oil prices in recent weeks
Lemay and Lincoln avenues, a mile
Orr decided to drill a couple of
have brought oil back down to
east of Old Town.
wells on some of his extensive land
where it was three years ago, and
"This sort of completes the
)rr's venture
holdings in the proven Denver-
with increased overhead costs, his
Brewery Triangle, the Hop Triangle,
iness has not
Julesburg Basin in southern Weld
profit margin has narrowed, but not
or whatever we want to call it," Tom
-ward.County
to see if he could tap into
enough to scare Orr out of the
Peters said The new project ties in
e years ago '
the rising price of oil.
_ xta, u.� .-: See ORR, 27 •
w r - See' FC BREWERY, 29