Business

BOOZE NEWS: Another brewery downtown; event venue wants to add distillery

A contractor is renovating the former Carolina Cleaners building for a brewpub and grill.

By Lightning Reports, Published: January 6, 2023

Development news as 2023 opens includes — and you can probably guess this one — another microbrewery.

A contractor has gutted the old Carolina Cleaners building in the 100 block of East Barnwell Street for a brewpub, the seventh in the city’s downtown and Seventh Avenue districts and 14th in Henderson County.

The property changed hands in 2021 and the brewpub project has been under way for a while. Contractor Eli Beddingfield of OK Construction in Zirconia received a building a permit last July to renovate the 3,500-square-foot former drycleaning building for a microbrewery and grill, called Booda in the permit application. The property is owned by Barnwell King Street Properties LLC, which bought the half-acre site for $420,000 in May 2021, according to tax records. The building permit values the renovation at $450,000.

The Lightning has not heard back from Beddingfield or Jeff Justus, a commercial real estate broker and developer who is listed as registered agent for Barnwell King Street Properties.

In other happy hours news, Tyler Hunsader of Jeter Mountain Farm is seeking an on-premise mixed beverage permit as part of a new distillery at the orchard, event space and wedding venue. And John Turchin is seeking state and local approval to sell beer, wine and mixed drinks at The Bar at The Horse Shoe Farm. Both permit requests are subject to approval by the Henderson County Board of Commissioners. The board generally signs off on ABC permit requests after a routine review by the sheriff’s office.