Yards to tap Spring Garden warehouse for bigger brewery

Baby bumps are giving way to beer bellies in Northern Liberties, where Yards Brewing Co. plans to build its new suds factory in the warehouse that had until recently been home to Destination Maternity Corp.

Yards is under agreement to lease up to 85,000 square feet at the maternity apparel company's former headquarters building at Fifth and Spring Garden Streets, part of a plan to boost production beyond the capacity of its current brewery about a mile away, company officials said.

The owner of the Destination Maternity building, Bryn Mawr-based investment company Alliance Partners HSP L.L.C, was scheduled to present details of the plan to community members Monday night.

Yards' decision to relocate to the building makes good on the 21-year-old company's vow to remain in Philadelphia, and it could help invigorate an edge of Northern Liberties that's lagged the rest of the neighborhood's rapid revitalization.

"We're Philadelphia's beer," Yards chief operating officer Trevor Prichett said. "Finding this location to build an iconic brewery site is really ideal for us."

At its current 38,000-square-foot space in another section of Northern Liberties, along the Delaware River, Yards is capable of producing about 60,000 barrels of its Philadelphia Pale Ale, Love Stout, and other brews.

The new facility will open in late 2017 with a 100,000-barrel capacity - which could potentially be doubled - in an effort to reach more deeply into Yards' market of Mid-Atlantic drinkers concentrated around Philadelphia.

Key to that plan is the addition of a canning line the additional space will accommodate, opening up new sales channels such as ball parks while appealing to consumers who prefer canned beer, Yards founder and president Tom Kehoe said.

The new location also will have a larger restaurant where Yards can serve such dishes as its trademark chili - made with meat from buffalo raised in Bucks County on the brewery's spent grain - as well as an event space.

The new brewery will be Yards' fifth since its founding in Manayunk in 1994. As it outgrew its current space, the company was determined to remain in the city, despite aggressive courting by other municipalities, said Kehoe, a transplant to the city from Haddonfield.

"We chose Philadelphia when we started the company, and I couldn't see us not being a part of this," he said.

At the former Destination Maternity headquarters, Yards will be the first of what Alliance HSP hopes will be a mix of users of the 225,000-square-foot building and surrounding land.

Alliance paid $13.4 million in August 2014 for the sprawling property on a quiet section of Spring Garden Street dominated by strip malls and industrial buildings, and situated along the southern edge of increasingly high-rent Northern Liberties. The maternity-wear company has since moved to Moorestown.

The investment company's previous vision for the site - which it had marketed as "SoNo" - called for the warehouse's conversion into office space, but it rethought that plan after a subsequent zoning change for the area permitted a wider variety of uses, according to Matt Handel, an Alliance senior associate.

"Yards will not only kick off our project, but will also serve as a catalyst for the redevelopment of the entire" area, he said in an email. "Multiple national retailers and creative office tenants have already expressed interest in joining Yards."

Source: Philly.com