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For Bronx Brewery, hurdles cleared and an end in sight
The future home of the Bronx Brewery on warmer, pre-construction days (Source: Google Maps)
This kind of sparse neighborhood is not an unusual location for a brewery. But it's kind of perfect. "The location is just what we wanted," brewery General Manager Chris Gallant says about the space, as I walk around a mostly-empty building with him and the brewery's two other employees. He touts the location's accessibility to both the entire city and the brewery's namesake borough. After scouting out places in the neighborhood, they settled on this 10,000 square-foot space, just a mile from the warehouse they had used as their home base on Bruckner Boulevard while brewing beer at Cottrell Brewing in Pawcatuck, Connecticut for the past two years.
The move was relatively easy, considering the biggest piece of equipment they had to move was a forklift, which Head Brewer Damian Brown drove to the new space at 5am one morning last March. That trip brought Gallant and Brown one step closer to their ultimate goal: opening a brewery in the Bronx. That goal, years in the making, is finally within reach now that construction is underway.
Trenches are dug for electrical work two weeks into the Bronx Brewery's construction
Nearly a year after securing the space, though, it's still hard to imagine the space will be a brewery. Construction just began two weeks ago, so aside from some trenches in the floor, it's hard to picture what the finished product will be. But there were dozens of steps to jump through just to get to this point. And the hardest parts are mostly over. Dealing with financing - Gallant's responsibility - might have been the most difficult.
With two years of business experience under their belt, the brewery was able to secure money from the bank to get their brewhouse built. That part has been sitting completed DME in Prince Edward Island since inspection in September. But that's only one small part of a brewery.
"We went to basically every single person we know - every friend, every relative," Gallant explains. "We got all this money together, and told them, 'this is what it'll cost to build a brewery and a taproom...'"
"...having never done it before," Brown jokes.
"You quickly realize you can't afford anything you want," he goes on. In speaking with other brewers in the city, it's become clear that this is a unique and exceptionally expensive place to open a brewery. Design, construction, regulatory fees, lawyers... all these things add up.
"I think what surprised us most," Gallant says, "is the amount of money we've spent on lawyers at various points of the process. It was unbelievable."
What may not come as a surprise is that once Bronx secured space and got quotes for the construction, with them came the inevitable sticker shock. Their original plan would cost them nearly four times what they had. So it was time to whittle down the amenities - enough to make it relatively affordable, but not enough that the place wouldn't function. Brown admits that the final plan " came down to 'what do we need to make beer, and do it well?'"
Even now, with most of the finances in place and construction underway, money is still an apprehension for Gallant. "Even today, we found out we need a new door, and that's another couple thousand dollars." Ultimately, this is a job, not a hobby, so they still need enough money to pay the brewery's three employees.
This space will ultimately house the Bronx's taproom
Money is just one part of the equation, though. "What we've realized, which is probably true among any startup," Gallant says, "is everything takes more time and costs more money."
"Mo' money, mo' problems!" Bronx Sales Manager Sean McCain chimes in. A longtime fixture in New York beer, the jokester McCain was brought on board in the summer of 2012, when Gallant and Brown were insistent that they would be operating a brewery in the borough by December of that year.
Quickly they learned that In building a brewery, timelines are merely a suggestion. I asked how many different timelines for opening their own brewery they had projected since the project began.
"Probably about six."
"Six counting the current one, right?"
"Six and growing!"
It's fun to joke about, but the ever-growing timeline is yet another of the frustrations in the process of building a brewery. Gallant says that he felt he was being disingenuous when years passed without a brewery in the Bronx. "But you're not being disingenuous; you honestly think that's your timeline."
"I think for me that's been tough, personally," Brown chimes in. "Over the last two and a half years, I've been telling people this is coming, and to not be here already... that's tough."
But this is the closest they've felt to being confident in their timeline. "We feel like we have a finish line, and that we're moving towards it, and that everything is lined up," McCain said. Naturally, I have to ask what they think that timeline is right now.
For Brown, it's late April. For Gallant, it's "late April or early May." The ground is broken now and the contractors have set a timeline, so it's hard to expect what might hold it up. "We need to dig down and find dinosaur bones for this construction to stop at this point."
A "before" photo of the Bronx's 10,000-square foot brewery space
The patience and persistence is finally leading to delivering on a promise: a promise that they made to their customers, their retailers, their investors, and even politicians who've invested energy in touting the company: the promise of brewing in the Bronx.
-- Chris O'Leary
This article is the first in a series documenting the construction of The Bronx Brewery.
