Brooklyn Brewery May Hop On Over To Brooklyn Navy Yard Or Industry City

Brooklyn Brewery may be hopping southwards to the Brooklyn Navy Yard or Industry City!

The news comes as these two locations, in Wallabout/Fort Greene/Clinton Hill and Sunset Park, respectively, are undergoing a manufacturing and business boom that Williamsburg no longer enjoys as much of.

However, Brooklyn Brewery still has nine years left on its current lease at 61-71 Wythe Avenue, noted Crain’s New York Business, so it’s unclear what a possible timetable would be like. But according to company COO/general manager Eric Ottaway, “we know our ability to renew is zero” since rents have risen and buildings are being transformed into luxury commercial and residential units.

Another reason: the company is reportedly aiming to “bring [their] manufacturing closer to the ports in the city” since their business overseas is booming. Staten Island will also be benefiting from these changes, with one of the company’s brewing plants moving there eventually, away from its current upstate New York digs in Utica.

The brewery, famous for its namesake lager, currently has space in Williamsburg. According to Ottaway. . . it is searching for as much as 60,000 square feet.Brooklyn Brewery is looking at the Navy Yard and Industry City as a potential spot for its brewing operations. The firm has been searching for space in the borough to relocate its manufacturing facilities.

. . . “What is tricky is finding a space where we can do the manufacturing but also have the retail be an important component,” Ottaway said. “It’s hard to find a neighborhood that has the level of visibility that Williamsburg has.”

However, Brooklyn Brewery responded to the rumors by assuring fans that they won’t leave Williamsburg unless the rents get so high that they can’t afford to renew their lease. In a blog post on their website, they wrote:

Let’s be clear: we’re not leaving. It’s true that our lease is up in nine years, but that’s nine years away. Nine years ago, we were producing a fraction of the beer we make today. We didn’t have a sister brewery, Nya Carnegie, in Stockholm, Sweden, or plans for another, E.C. Dahls, in Trondheim, Norway. We hadn’t begun our plans to expand on Staten Island. Black Ops still didn’t exist. A lot can happen in nine years, and we’re not going to commit ourselves to predicting the future.

As regards the rumored checking out of the Navy Yard and Industry City, they wrote that it was simply part of “location scouting” for “exciting projects on the horizon.”

Ottaway also told DNAInfo that “It may not be possible to renew in this neighborhood. . . We’d love to stay here, but if we can’t we’re not going to leave Brooklyn. We have 10 years to figure it out.”

If Brooklyn Brewery does eventually come to the Navy Yard, it will have good company: as we announced a couple of weeks ago, Russ & Daughters is also coming to the site as an anchor tenant to Building 77’s future food court and community home.