Urban Chestnut Announces $10 Million Expansion Plan & 2nd Brewery

From Urban Chestnut:

(St. Louis, MO) – Urban Chestnut Brewing Company, a 2-year old St. Louis, MO craft brewery, has announced they are in the planning stages to open a second and significantly larger production brewery also located in the city of Saint Louis.

The new brewing facility is expected to be a $10-Million project increasing Urban Chestnut’s current annual brewing capacity to about 15,000 barrels, while further enhancing an area within the City of St. Louis that has undergone significant transformation over the last several years (Forest Park Southeast, aka “The Grove”). The UCBC project will add approximately 10 full-time and 30 part-time jobs in the City of St. Louis within the next two years. Projected to open in early 2014, UCBC is partnering with Green Street St. Louis (Green Street), an innovative real estate firm recognized for the sustainable redevelopment of underutilized St. Louis-area commercial properties into LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified buildings.

The two former Anheuser-Busch veterans and co-founders of Urban Chestnut, Florian Kuplent and David Wolfe, have been working with Green Street for over a year to identify a property that would meet their collective vision. A vision resulting in the plan to renovate the former Renard Paper Company at 4465 Manchester Ave into a 70,000 square foot production brewery, packaging facility, warehouse and indoor/outdoor retail taste room. Beyond embracing the principles of environmental stewardship and social responsibility by seeking LEED certification, UCBC & Green Street also plan to modify the façade of the current city-block long warehouse to visibly and physically integrate it into the already vibrant “The Grove” neighborhood.

“People might ask why open a second facility and ALSO locate it in St. Louis? Well, first & foremost 95% of the beer we sold last year was in St. Louis, and like Schlafly and many of the other small, local brewers, we’re dedicated to the evolution of St. Louis as a craft beer destination,” remarked Wolfe.

Kuplent added, “We’ve been growing at about 200%, year over year, and we never imagined we’d grow this fast.

Essentially it means we’re going to run out of the space to add further capacity at our current location sometime this year…and we mostly have St. Louis beer drinkers and our retail partners to thank for that!”

Operationally, Urban Chestnut plans to brew, package and sell beer at BOTH locations:

Urban Chestnut brewed around 3500 bbls in 2012 and expects to brew approximately 7000 bbls in 2013.

In addition to operating both breweries, Wolfe and Kuplent also plan to provide a unique & distinctive customer experience at each Urban Chestnut location. “Our brewing philosophy and branding has always been based on the idea of ‘new world ~ old world’ or what we call ‘Revolution and ‘Reverence’. We think it’s really cool that we’re going to apply this same concept to each of the two facilities; our original location will possess the “Reverence” identity and our new location the “Revolution” identity,” says Wolfe.

Urban Chestnut and Green Street plan to implement design and material elements that will award them with a level of LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. “Our collective goal is to renovate the building and introduce mechanisms that maximize the efficiency of Urban Chestnut operations while minimizing their impact on the environment,” stated Hulse. “Generally speaking, we intend to employ ‘green’ modifications to minimize Urban Chestnut’s energy footprint.”
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