Commercial Real Estate: Lower Lonsdale quickly becoming region's new brewery district
Credit to Author: Evan Duggan| Date: Tue, 01 Oct 2019 21:24:41 +0000
Signs of transformation are already appearing in North Vancouver’s recently designated brewery district.
Darren Hollett, the co-founder of the new House of Funk brewery at 350 East Esplanade, estimates in two years there could be a total of seven or eight breweries in the new district anchored around the 200- and 300-blocks of East Esplanade and the 200-block of East 1st Street in Lower Lonsdale.
“The more the merrier,” Hollett told Postmedia in a recent interview.
Hollett joined owners from nearby Streetcar Brewing and Beere Brewing to help push the city to amend the area zoning bylaw to make it easier for brewers to sell more beer.
In April, the city enacted an area-wide zoning change, which essentially allowed for a cluster of breweries.
“Prior to the amendment to the zoning bylaw, we were not permitted to have (full-service) lounges,” Hollett said. That meant, in their brewery tasting rooms, they were restricted to selling each customer a maximum of 12 ounces.
Now, the city allows for lounges — with size restrictions — attached to the breweries in the designated brewery district. Brewers can sell more beer to customers in those spaces.
“As soon as that took effect, we were able to start the process with the (province’s) liquor board to be able to get our lounge endorsement, which we’re hoping to get within the next week or two,” Hollett said.
From left: Matt Thomas (principal of Avison Young), Craig Beere (owner, Have a Beere) and Darren Hollett (founder/general manager, House of Funk Brewing).
Matt Thomas (left) is a principal with Avison Young, Craig Beere is owner of Beere Brewing, and Darren Hollett is founder of House of Funk Brewing.
He said any new brewery opening in the area will now be able to open with their lounge endorsements in hand.
The zoning change is already transforming the area and more breweries are coming, he said.
Streetcar Brewing recently opened at 123A East 1st, and North Point Brewing Co. is set to open soon.
“There’s rumours of a few others going in the area,” Hollett said.
The district will be similar to Port Moody’s brewer’s row or East Vancouver’s cluster of breweries set around Commercial, Venables and Powell streets.
“It’s a fabulous thing,” said Craig Beere, who has operated Beere Brewing at 312 East Esplanade with his son since 2017.
Other than Green Leaf Brewing, which is located in the Lonsdale Quay Market, Beere Brewing was the first craft brewery and tasting room to emerge in the area.
Beere said they didn’t anticipate helping to create a brewery district.
“We didn’t think that would be the case to start,” he said. “Knowing that there is a lot of residential expansion and development to the east of us, obviously Lonsdale has been busy. In the back of your mind, you’d think things would change from a zoning point of view, but did I predict all the breweries? No.”
In total, the district includes: Beere, House of Funk, Green Leaf, Streetcar and North Point, which is opening in January.
“We were the leader in the area,” Beere said, noting they underwent a time-consuming permitting process with the city and province prior to the area-wide zoning change, which was a bit frustrating.
Beere’s own lounge endorsement should arrive imminently.
More competition tends to be a good thing in the craft brewing industry, Beere said.
“(House of Funk’s) opening up has only helped with sales,” he said, explaining that several breweries in a cluster generates a lot of foot traffic that boosts business for everyone.
“When the brewery district (zoning) was launched earlier this year, that’s when my phone started blowing up and everybody was trying to get a hold of me, trying to find new locations for sites,” said Matt Thomas, a principal with Avison Young commercial property brokerage in Vancouver.
“We’re seeing the auto repair (and) auto-body (businesses), who were predominantly on East Esplanade and East 1st, slowly transitioning out,” Thomas said. “We’re seeing developers coming in and buying old buildings (to) either renovate them or build new developments.”
Last year, Harbourview completed two stacked office/warehouse strata developments at 350 and 370 East Esplanade, he said. House of Funk took one of those units.
The transformation will stoke industrial sales and leasing prices, which have already been climbing in the area, Thomas said.
He said Harbourview’s strata unit sales reached $500 per square foot in pricing.
“When they launched that, I thought that number was crazy and way too high, because we had only seen strata sales in the $300 to $350 a foot range (in that area) at that point. When (the buildings) were completed, a number of those owners were flipping the properties for $850 a square foot.”
“We recently sold a building at $900 per square foot,” Thomas said, adding that future industrial strata projects in the area could hit sales prices of $1,000 per square foot.
Thomas agreed that more breweries are coming. “It makes sense because you’re close to all these amenities. You’ve got public transit, you’ve got the SeaBus nearby, and you’re surrounded by all this residential development.”