USA, MO: Logboat Brewing Co. one step closer to expansion

Logboat Brewing Co. wants to expand. To do this, the business needs a larger production facility, which in turn would lead to a larger bar space, the Columbia Daily Tribune reported on September 25.

There are just a few wrinkles.

When the City of Columbia adopted its unified development code in 2017, the current size of Logboat's bar and tasting room was allowed, even though it didn't meet the code. Logboat was exempt since it opened in 2014, prior to the adoption of the UDC.

Because Logboat is now seeking a bar and building expansion, the business needed to seek conditional use permit approval from the city's Planning and Zoning Commission. The commission approved the permit during its meeting Thursday, and now it moves on to the Columbia City Council for a final decision.

Logboat owners already sought a rezoning from mixed neighborhood commercial to general industrial. The commission approved that request last month, and the city council followed suit during its consent agenda Monday.

Another issue in the expansion plan is parking.

Logboat seeks to convert a triangular-shaped gravel lot it owns adjacent to the facility into an ADA-compliant parking lot, a condition of the permit.

One area that greatly concerned commission member Sharon Geuea Jones was the building size and utility setbacks on the property.

There will be one delivery door off College Avenue. While deliveries to this bay will not impact traffic and likely will only be used once a year, Logboat co-founder Andrew Sharp said, it still has a narrower setback for utilities than what Geuea Jones expected — 10 feet instead of 25 feet from the proposed city right-of-way.

The 10-foot setback means a smaller area for a greenspace on the east side of the building facing College Avenue, also concerning Geuea Jones.

The bulk of the lot for the greenspace at Logboat is not owned by Logboat, she said.

"If in 20 years Logboat is still going strong and needs an even larger space, you have to move," Geuea Jones said. "So now we have this giant industrial space next to a separate lot, and if those things get separated, now instead of having greenspace all around this building, it's right up to property lines."

The area for landscaping on the east side of the building is larger than what appears on the site plan, Columbia Development Services Manager Patrick Zenner said.

The landscaping on this side of the building will help mitigate the building scale appearance, he added.

Logboat plans to do extensive landscaping in this area, said Jesse Stephens, with Crockett Engineering, who was representing Logboat.

The edge of the expanded building is between 37 feet and roughly 41 feet from College Avenue because of the lot shape. The driveway and delivery bay will be on this wider portion. The 10-foot utility easement is contained running north to south in the area from the building's edge to the proposed city right-of-way.

The 25-foot setback would have meant more of a buffer for the Benton-Stephens residential neighborhood east of College Avenue, commission chair Sara Loe said.

If there had been a 25-foot utility easement setback from the proposed city right-of-way, the proposed building expansion would have had to be smaller and would have impacted the expansion plans overall, Stephens said.

"It would reduce what (Logboat is) wanting to do in terms of overall operations," Stephens said.

There is a loading dock area on the building's west side, based on a site plan attached to the meeting agenda.

This east delivery bay will be used to get the new brewery equipment into the proposed expanded production facility. Logboat, as a condition of the permit, is capping building height at 50 feet. The exterior wall facing College Avenue will have windows into the facility so that people can see the inner workings of the brewery from the street.

Commissioners added a condition to the permit to ensure the window wall was included in final plans. Another condition added by the commission required landscaping standards as laid out in the UDC.

26 September, 2021