[BagbyBeer.com]
—
Building Permits – Construction documents were submitted to the city in late February. We were able to schedule a conference with the key department representatives (called a ‘Developer’s Conference’) in January, and a few important issues were uncovered at that point that needed to be addressed. Incredibly, the city provided review comments within just a couple of weeks – which was an unprecedented turnaround (kudos, Oceanside!). At this point we are looking at beginning construction sometime in April.
Timeline – Probably the most common question at this point is “so, when are you going to be open?” While this is extremely difficult to estimate, high-level guesses have put construction at about 5-6 months.
Brewing Equipment – After a long and rather difficult decision process, DME (Diversified Metal Engineering) has been selected as the brewery equipment manufacturer. The brewhouse capacity will be 20BBL and each piece of the brewing equipment will be custom designed for Bagby Beer’s needs.
Craft Brewers Conference – Jeff is off to the CBC next week in Washington, D.C. He’ll be hitting the trade show floor, visiting with the DME team, sourcing kegs, and taking a look at the vast array of brewery-related equipment. As usual, the CBC will allow Jeff some time to catch up with many industry friends.
Construction & Budget – We selected three local General Contractors to bid the project – the bid sets have been provided, and we are very close to receiving cost estimates for buildout. These costs will no doubt have an impact on the final project scope, and thus our strategy for when and how to incorporate some of the elements on our plans. The ultimate scope will depend on the cost estimates from the GCs and the impact of the buildout cost on the final budget.
Of course the ever-important budget is what ultimately drives our ongoing fundraising efforts (and will also tell us when we are done with the fundraising phase!), so we are really anxious to get our arms around it.