With Stone Brewing Co. eyeing a host of cities east of the Mississippi River for a brewing, distribution and retail hub, Charlotte boosters are hoping to draw the attention of the California-based company.
Both the Charlotte Regional Partnership and the Charlotte Chamber have submitted bids for the project, which will include a beer-brewing and packaging facility as well as a hospitality component with a garden, restaurant and store.
Various news reports indicate that Greensboro, Wilmington and Myrtle Beach in the Carolinas as well as cities in Virginia, Tennessee and Pennsylvania are among the other locales vying for the project.
Stone is looking to invest $20 million in its East Coast facility, which would eventually employ more than 300 workers — and the availability of incentives is one thing on a long list of specifics the company asked for in its request for proposals.
But the Charlotte area is home to a growing number of locally based craft-beer makers, and at least one of them thinks giving incentives to a large company to set up shop here would be unfair.
“I do find it ironic and irritating that local government would offer incentives to come,” John Marrino, the owner of Olde Mecklenburg Brewery, said in an interview last week with Fox Carolinas. “We’ve been working our butts off to build our business and we don’t get any incentives.”
Marrino’s brewery, the oldest and the largest in Charlotte, will celebrate five years in business this month. It has 40 employees and is considering adding eight more this year, Marrino tells me, even as it invests $6 million to revitalize an old factory off South Tryon Street for its new home. OMB produced nearly 10,000 barrels of beer last year, up from 7,000 barrels in 2012.
