Scot Bathgate has noticed: “Awesome new brewery bars forming off of Main street”
Opening this year in the old Brewery Creek district around 6th and Main (map here) are no less than four new breweries: Main Street Brewing, Red Truck, Brassneck and 33 Acres. All will fill growlers. And slightly further afield are Doan’s Craft Brewing Company, Four Winds, and Dogwood Brewing. All are slated to open their doors this year and would likewise love to send you home with two litres of The Good Stuff
More here from Canadian Beer News.
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And yes, this is relevant to the Waldorf controversy.
It was the loss of artist live-w0rk space that justified Council, back in the late 1980s , to allow live/work spaces for artists in an area just to the east of Main and north of Broadway. (Good background here in a UBC thesis by Mona Poon.)
The issue was whether, in encouraging affordable spaces for artists, we would also be creating conflicts for the existing industrial users and pricing up the value of land as residential uses prevailed.
No doubt some of that happened (there are over 1,500 units in the area in a specialized real-estate market) – but it might be an option for the area around the Waldorf. Especially if the Waldorf is maintained as an active arts centre (i.e. noisy at odd times of the day and night) and surrounding residents will be expected to be tolerant. (Residents in the Mt. Pleasant live/work area, if I recall, had to sign a statement that they recognized the presence of industrial conflicts.)
Very nice to see, then, that brewers are returning to the area originally known as Brewery Creek – and where one of the original breweries is now a preserved heritage builidng – residential, of course.
