A group from the family-owned brewery toured the property, with its microbrewery equipment, kitchen, and rooftop dining area with views of the Great Miami River and downtown Hamilton, and was enthusiastic about the building’s possibilities. They introduced themselves to Hamilton City Council members after Wednesday’s council meeting.
The city is not releasing names of all the companies that are interested.
Jason Brewer, general manager of Listermann Brewing, said the company is looking to open a second brewing location and restaurant because, “We’re kind of bursting at the seams at our current location now.”
If Listermann would move into the Hamilton site, it would can beer there.Among its awards, in 2016, Barrel-aged Chickow! won a gold medal and Best in Show at the Festival of Wood and Barrel Aged Beers. In 2014, Nutcase Peanut Butter Porter won a bronze medal at the Great American Beer Festival.
The company produced about 1,800 barrels of beer last year, and would create the same amount at the Hamilton, doubling its production. It is looking at more than one Hamilton site, Brewer said.
“The neighborhood’s great, it’s got a great German heritage, and I feel it’s a community on the rise and something we really want to be a part of,” Brewer said.
Listermann owner Dan Listermann said the company has been commercially brewing since 2008.
“It’s nice,” he said about the Main Street building. “We’d go into that and change very little of it. It’s really nice. Brand new, and I can’t imagine why it failed.”
“The brew house is wonderful,” he said. “Five-barrel brew house, 35 barrels of fermentation capacity, five serving tanks.”
The Listermann group also was impressed with the kitchen, the high-profile location and views from the roof.
“We had I think, it would be fair to say 30 parties that reached out to the city or CORE (the Consortium for Ongoing Reinvestment Efforts Fund),” said Lauren Gersbach, a business development specialist for the city.
She and others offered about 20 tours of the newly renovated building. Quarter Barrel Brewery + Pub abruptly closed its location in the building on Jan. 3, along with its Oxford location. Some of those 20 tours were repeat visits by companies.
The microbrewery had opened last January.
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Hamilton sent out requests for qualifications to interested companies on Jan. 11, and responses from the businesses are due back by the close of business Friday.
The city then hopes to decide on a few finalists, perhaps 2-5 companies, and inform those companies next week. The city then will request more information from the finalists and schedule interviews with them so they can make their pitches and discuss their plans for the space, their timelines for moving in and the money they would bring to the project, Gersbach said.
Interested companies are “a good mix of restaurateurs and successful breweries in the southwest Ohio, greater Cincinnati area,” she said. “What we’re looking for that corner is first and foremost a successful restaurant, and secondly, a brewery.”
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“It’s important that we have a restaurant as an anchor tenant as we’re continuing to build the Main Street business district,” she said, adding a successful restaurant would create more foot traffic that would help nearby businesses.
“We are really excited to have that building reactivated again, and have people back inside, enjoying a good meal, and a drink, and back on the rooftop patio as soon as we can make it happen,” she said.
“It’s a prime location, which is why I think we’ve seen so much interest over the past three weeks,” Gersbach said. “The building underwent a full renovation, and there’s commercial kitchen equipment, the brewing equipment, all of that is there.”
She hesitated to give a date when the city will choose the company that can occupy the building, but said, “We’re going to move this forward as quickly as we can.”
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