ITHACA, N.Y. – The Ithaca Beer Co. is excited – at long last – to announce it will officially break ground on Friday, August 26th at 4:00PM for their new brewery.
Dan Mitchell, Founder, of Ithaca Beer Co., with company employees, shareholders, family, the Chamber of Commerce and city officials standing by will dig into a 10-acre site on 82 acres of land Mitchell purchased over a year ago.
The new land is located just behind the current brewing facility and can be accessed off Rt. 13 and Rt. 13A through a private drive. Recently, Mitchell was unanimously approved by the Ithaca Town Board to go forward on plans to build a new brewery for the Ithaca Beer Co. The town zoned a 12.52-acre parcel of land as a private development zone (PDZ), and the current private roads – Mancini Drive and Mancini Way – will be renamed Ithaca Beer Drive and Brewery Lane.
As part of the PDZ, the town also approved Ithaca Beer signs on both Rt. 13 and 13A to help customers find the new location. The new brewery will include a brewing facility able to accommodate growth up to 3 times its current production. Ithaca Beer Co. will brew and bottle 180,000 cases of beer this year. The new facility will have enough space to brew and bottle about half a million cases per year.
Ithaca Beer anticipates steadily growing production up to this amount over the next five years. The new brewery will also include a tasting room, brew pub specializing in flatbread pizzas, and outdoor beer gardens for patrons to enjoy good beer, good food, good scenery, and hopefully some partly sunny weather!
Drawings of the new facility are on display inside the Tasting Room in the existing brewery, and will remain up for the next couple months. Ithaca Beer plans to have the production facility up and running by early spring, and the offices, tasting room, and brew pub open around late May 2012.