Denver’s Great Divide to Sell 65,000 sq. ft. RiNo Taproom and Packaging Hall

Great Divide Brewing Company plans to sell its nearly 6-year-old Barrel Bar and packaging hall in Denver’s River North Art District.

The 27-year-old craft brewery will consolidate its operations at its Ballpark District brewery and taproom at 2201 Arapahoe Street, where the company has maintained its beer production.

The Denver Post reported that Great Divide will continue to operate the packaging hall and taproom until it sells, so the company will likely exit the facility in 2022.

“Right now, we have two facilities that are not being maximized,” Great Divide founder Brian Dunn said in a statement released to media outlets. “We had three options on the table: move all operations to RiNo; move everything to a new location outside of Denver; or relocate to our original location. In the end, returning to our roots made the most business sense. This will allow us to reinvest in our facility and our people, our two most important assets.”

The sale of the property will not lead to any layoffs, the Post reported.

According to the Denver Property Taxation and Assessment System, the property at 1812 35th Street has a 2020 assessed value of $3,272,100 and an actual value of $11,283,100.

Great Divide’s barrel bar opened to the public on July 31, 2015, two years after the company acquired a five acre plot in Denver’s popular RiNo neighborhood. The company moved into a 65,000 sq. ft building, with taproom space for up to 40 people, a patio that stretched capacity to 100 people, a packaging hall with a “state-of-the-art KHS canning line, warehouse space, and room to store 1,500 barrels between the barrel-aging room and a negatively pressurized sour room.”

At the time, Great Divide said it had run out of space at its original Ballpark location.

“When it came time to find a space to expand our brewery, leaving Denver was never an option,” Dunn said in a press release at the time. “It wasn’t easy, but we are so happy to have found a place only a mile down the road where we can continue growing for the next 21 years.”

The same year that Great Divide opened the facility in 2015, the company’s production peaked at 43,806 barrels, according to data published in the Brewers Association’s New Brewer magazine. The next year, production dipped 19%, to 35,318 barrels, but rebounded to 40,340 in 2017 before declining -22%, to 31,576 barrels, and -8%, to 29,182 barrels, in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

Production declined again in 2020, to 24,500 barrels, according to the Denver Post.

Great Divide’s plans to sell the 65,000 sq. ft. facility comes 16 months after the company sold 2.4 acres of land to a Denver developer and scrapped plans to build a new production brewery on the site.

After selling a portion of the land in September 2019, Dunn told Denver alt-weekly newspaper Westword that the proceeds would be used to pay off debt and invest in sales and marketing.