What’s next, The Cyclone moving to The Bronx?
The Brooklyn Brewery left beer lovers crying in their mugs Monday as it announced plans to jilt the borough of Ralph Kramden and build its new plant across the Verrazano Bridge in Staten Island.
“They are local and it’d be great to keep them local if that was possible,” lamented John Richards, a manager at Mugs Alehouse, which sits a few blocks from the brewer’s Williamsburg headquarters.
“I mean, they were established here,” he said.
News of the beer maker’s scheme to transform itself from a Brooklyn brew to a landfill lager has also exposed one of the company’s little-known secrets — most of its product hasn’t been very “Brooklyn” for a long time.
Up to 80 percent of Brooklyn Brewery beer has been produced in upstate Utica since the 1980s, meaning that the move to Staten Island would actually make the beer more of a New York City product.
To get plans flowing, the company has made a grant application to the New York City Regional Economic Development Council to cover some of the $70 million needed to build the 200,000-square-foot facility on Staten Island’s western shore.
Brooklyn Brewery described the proposed plant as a “state-of-the-art 400,000- expandable to 1,000,000-barrel brewery on 20-25 acres” — a vast stretch of land that the company’s general manager, Eric Ottaway, said was impossible to find in the brewery’s home borough.
“New York City is not an easy place to do business as a manufacturer,” he said.
The new facility would bring 92 full-time jobs to Staten Island, according to the proposal.
Brooklyn Brewery plans to continue its current operation in Williamsburg if and when the Staten Island plant is finished. The target date is late 2017.
Ottaway downplayed concerns that his company is flirting with another borough.
“I don’t think people have a problem with it [beer brewed outside Brooklyn] now,” he said. “If anything, we’re bringing it closer to home.”
The label now brews about 260,000 31-gallon barrels of beer a year and hopes to up production to 450,000 if the Staten Island plant can be built.
A final decision on any funding will be made this fall. But Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams vowed to fight to keep the beer.
“Brooklyn Brewery is the quintessential Brooklyn business brand, one of our greatest success stories,” he said. “I look forward to speaking with the Brewery . . . and see how we may be able to support their growth locally.”