E-Malt.com News article: USA, IN: New brewery may be launched in Muncie soon

The founder of the Scotty’s Brewhouse restaurant chain is among a group exploring the possibility of turning a vacant downtown Muncie industrial building into a business incubator and brewery, The Star Press reported on January 11.

The Cintas building at the corner of Madison and Jackson streets is the focus of what might be a joint effort involving the city, Ball State University and Scott Wise, a Muncie-born entrepreneur who founded his growing restaurant empire here in 1996.

“We’re looking at that building for our brewing facility,” Wise told The Star Press. “We’re talking to them about how we can get involved and put our brewing facility there.”

Wise said the 5,000-square-foot brewery at his Broad Ripple Thr3e Wise Men brew pub is “maxed out,” and he likes the thought of investing and creating additional jobs in Muncie.

Wise will open a Thr3e Wise Men restaurant in the Courtyard by Marriott hotel now under construction — with a projected December 2015 opening — downtown.

Mayor Dennis Tyler told The Star Press that the idea to redevelop the building — known as the home of Midwest Towel for a half-century — as a means of boosting business was too good to pass up.

“Negotiations are going on now for the purchase of the building,” Tyler said, adding it hadn’t been determined yet who might own the building or if an entity might be created to buy and own the building.

“Redevelopment there would be extremely important for downtown,” Tyler said. Reuse of the building, which has been mostly empty since 2009, would be important, Tyler said. But job creation — either through incubation of new businesses or by the hiring of the 50 employees that Wise estimated he might employ there canning and distributing beer — would be another boost.

The idea grew out of discussions between Tyler and Ball State University officials and professors about a maker’s district, an area of the city that would encourage artisans and craftsmen.

Scott Truex, an urban planning professor at Ball State and co-director of the Sustainable Communities Institute, said the idea of reusing the Cintas building was one that figured into early discussions between Tyler and the university.

“It’s the idea of taking something that many consider an eyesore and flipping that, making it a catalyst for downtown,” Truex said. “This is one of those ideas a lot of people can get behind and the mayor has been phenomenal in this effort.”

About 83,000 square feet in the main building could be used not only for the brewery but to help kick-start other businesses.

On real estate websites, the asking price for the building is $395,000, down from $475,000 in 2012.

Tyler said the project would be boosted considerably by cooperative efforts by partners like the city, Ball State University and IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital. The three were founding partners in the city’s first business incubator, the Innovation Connector.

Wise said that Muncie as a beer production and distribution center isn’t as centrally located to his restaurants as new development in Indianapolis might be. But he said that wasn’t his primary consideration in pursuing the Muncie brewery idea.

“I like getting back to Muncie, the place where it all started,” Wise said.


14 January, 2015