Brooklyn Brewery

Beer garden, Restaurant, Bar + Event Space
Brooklyn, NY

About

Brooklyn Brewery, renowned craft brewer, came to us in the middle of lease negotiations with the Brooklyn Navy Yard for additional brewery capacity, including a rooftop space that was a complete add-on to the building structure. The Brewery executive team engaged HPI to develop an multi-faceted, rooftop restaurant concept; and to assist with the design planning, as well as assess the over-all project feasibility while the negotiations proceeded.

Challenge

The building conditions and the proposed rooftop construction—which essentially added a story and a half to the existing structure—presented a number of operational and design hurdles in light of the budget and prospects for a reasonable return on the effort.

Solution

The team took a deep dive into the Brewery culture, met frequently with the Brewery leadership and created an exciting conceptual plan that met with their aspirations, the Company culture and business objectives. As the design for the project advanced many construction-related issues surfaced that forced changes in the operational design and experience offering and drove the potential development costs higher and higher.

Weighing the rising investment cost against the revenue potential of the desired operation, HPI concluded the multi-faceted venture could not deliver on the Brewery’s objectives and recommended that the venture be considerably scaled back or aborted. The recommendations along with projected increasing construction cost informed a turn in the lease negotiations that led to the Brewery’s reconsideration of the project. They ultimately walked away, saving what could well have been a thirty-million-dollar white elephant.