ESCONDIDO, CA – Stone Brewing Company, the San Diego brewery famous for it’s “Arrogant” line of beers is expanding, and in a very big way.
Stone Brewing, the 14th largest craft brewery as tallied by the Brewers Association, will announce the exact details of the expansion at a media-only event later this afternoon but Peter Rowe from the Union Tribune, who initially broke the story, reports that the planned expansion will cost an estimated $26.6 million and create 250 new jobs.
The report also confirmed that major components of the plan will include building a 400-seat restaurant at Point Loma’s Liberty Station, an expansion to the existing Escondido location allowing the brewery to capacity to produce up to 500,000 barrels a year, the creation of a store in South Park’s ‘beer cooridor’ and lastly taking over operations of an 18.7 acre organic farm.
The new restaurant at Point Loma will come equipped with space for outdoor movie screenings, a 19,000 square foot beer garden, a small brewery and even bocce courts. The store front in South Park will serve as a way for customers to purchase bottles, kegs and growlers while the farm will help supply the restaurants with organic produce.
Co-Founder of Stone Brewing Co., Greg Koch, confirmed via email that the store front will be named ‘Stone Company Store-South Park.’
“It feels exciting,” Koch wrote in a short email prior to the event.
The ‘exciting’ announcement comes in the middle of American Craft Beer Week, and in the midst of news that Sierra Nevada, the second-largest craft brewer in the country, is looking to expand operations into Tennessee. It also follows and announcement earlier this month that fellow San Diego craft brewer, Green Flash Brewing Co., expanded into a location capable or producing up to 100,000 barrels annually.
Greg Koch also confirmed that this announcement will not conflict or affect Stone Brewing’s attempt at expanding into Europe.
The media-only event, scheduled to take place between 9:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. today, will include a bus tour to each site of the new business ventures. According to a press release sent by Stone Brewing earlier this month, a new beer series will also be unveiled.
Brewbound.com will be on hand and provide continual coverage as more details on this story unfold.