How Craft Breweries Are Helping to Revive Local Economies<br />The Northeast, Midwest and West still represent much of the industry,<br />but 36 states doubled their production of craft beer from 2011 to 2016, according to Mr. Barnett, who last year wrote “The Craft Beer Guidebook to Real Estate,” a JLL report.<br />“We are having an impact on the community, for sure,” said Ricardo Petroni, a co-owner of Equilibrium,<br />which opened in 2016 in a former meatpacking plant that had been seized over nonpayment of taxes.<br />They like early-20th-century buildings with up to 10,000 square feet<br />and lofty ceilings, said Sandy A. Barin, a vice president with the commercial real estate firm CBRE based in Minneapolis who counts brewers among his clients.<br />From densely settled Brooklyn to small towns by the Canadian border, the breweries include the Newburgh Brewing Company, which occupies an 1850s former box factory; Battle Street Brewery, in a former train station in Dansville, near the Finger Lakes;<br />and Pressure Drop Brewing in Buffalo, in a former barrel factory.<br />The building that houses Equilibrium, for instance, was sold to the brewery for $260,000, with $225,000 of<br />that forgivable if the brewery remained in business for at least five years, said Mr. Petroni, who along with his partner, Peter Oates, invested $1.4 million to upgrade the property.<br />Usually renters instead of owners, breweries in Minneapolis typically sign five-year leases<br />and pay $4.50 a square foot annually, Mr. Barin said, although tenants are usually on the hook for renovations, even if landlords offer credits for finishes like paint and carpeting.<br />“When we moved here, you could see old scars of bad times,” Mr. Petroni added, “but you can tell that now, new things are flourishing.”<br />Across the country, in once-bustling manufacturing centers, breweries are giving new fizz to sleepy commercial districts.
