Microbrewery project progressing, step by step

ALBANY — City of Albany officials are working with the team designing Dr. Tripp Morgan’s planned microbrewery and in finalizing a lease agreement on land where the downtown brewery will be located as the highly anticipated project moves, step-by-step, toward breaking ground for construction.

Albany-Planning Services Director Paul Forgey said he and other planning officials met informally Wednesday with representatives of Pretoria Fields, Morgan’s company that is building the brewery and tending some 500 acres of farmland where crops for the brewing process will be grown, to discuss approval of the microbrewery design.

Forgey will make a recommendation to the city’s Historic Preservation Commission on the final design of the project, located at 122 and 124 Pine Avenue.

“I had expressed my concern about their initial plan for the design of the brewery,” Forgey said Thursday. “At first, they wanted to do a complete removal and renovation on both lots (which formerly housed an Albany Herald warehouse and the ADICA-owned Art Park), but I had reservations with that plan. There is historical significance to the facades of those buildings, and that (100) block is, I believe, the only one in Albany that has unbroken store frontage.

“The Herald warehouse has less historic significance, and the design team had planned to remove one of the facades and replace it with open ironworks. I told them we could live with demolition of that facade if they replaced it with something more significant. I didn’t feel that I could recommend approval of the ironworks with no facade. So they came up with a new design that I think everyone can live with.”

Derek Imes, one of Morgan’s partners on the project, said the Pretoria Fields group is creating its plans for the microbrewery design around Historic Preservation Commission requirements.

“We are spending some — perhaps 20 percent — of the money from the (city’s revolving downtown development grant, reported to be $1.25 million) on the preservation of the facades and are creating our plans around that requirement,” Imes said. “The reason we initially wanted to start from scratch is because the current layout isn’t ideal due to the grade of the site, but we understand the importance of historic preservation and are willing to spend extra to make everyone happy.”

Forgey, who spoke with The Herald via phone from Athens, where he was making a presentation about the process of bringing the microbrewery to downtown Albany, said Morgan spokesman Albert Etheridge and others on the Pretoria Fields design and engineering team are easy to work with.

“Pretoria Fields’ contractor, architects and engineers understand that there are certain historic standards that the Historic Preservation Commission will be looking for when they make a final decision on the design,” Forgey said. “In fact, I believe their team is the same one that designed the microbreweries here in Athens, one that is located in the warehouse district, the other in an old tire store. Everyone is bragging about the design of the Snow Tire building.

“Their team is very easy to work with, though. They understand that they can’t move forward with the project until it is compliant with the commission’s guidelines. To get to this point, everyone has been willing to compromise.”

Etheridge said he and the Pretoria design team are meeting with Albany officials like Forgey and Downtown Manager Latoya Cutts to “check off boxes.”

“We’re well aware that this is a process, and we’re taking those steps, one-two-three,” Etheridge said. “”We’ve had some great meetings with city officials; they’ve been very supportive, worked with us hand-in-hand. I think we’ll have all these matters ironed out in the next few weeks.”

Cutts said she’s working with Pretoria Fields team members to finalize details on the lease agreement.

“We had a conference call with them this week,” the downtown manager said Thursday. “They offered us feedback on a few changes they wanted to make in the language of the lease. None of those changes should present an issue that will slow the process.”

Etheridge said the Pretoria Fields team’s initial work with the city is all but done.

“The MOU (memorandum of understanding) is in place; we just need to work out the final lease details,” he said. “I think the process is proceeding smoothly, one step at a time.”