Work steams ahead on nearly $50 million Columbia brewery project. We got a look inside
As it turns out, rebirth is noisy.
The telltale sounds of construction — hammers banging, forklifts zipping around, drills whirring — filled the massive space at 3452 North Main St. in Columbia on a recent Wednesday afternoon. The work is underway to bring a historic building back to life and launch a massive brewery and multi-use space a few miles north of downtown.
Construction is in full swing at Peak Drift Brewing Company at the former Stone Manufacturing Company facility on North Main. The 65,000-square-foot building is being revamped as a full-production brewery and hospitality complex that will include restaurant space with indoor and outdoor dining options, a members-only gym, an entertainment stage, a duckpin bowling alley, a merchandise shop and much more.
The production brewery portion of the operation — which encompasses 25,000-square-feet of the facility — is being led by master brewer Ashley Kinart-Short, one of the few female head brewmasters in the nation. Kinart-Short had a long history in the brewing industry in Wisconsin and was previously the master brewer at Capital Brewery, a large regional craft brewery headquartered in Middleton, Wisconsin.
Kinart-Short was busy prepping the brewery when a reporter recently visited at North Main, donning a hard hat as she worked on various tanks and equipment. She’s enthused about being a key part of an aggressive endeavor. The total Peak Drift Brewing complex on North Main is a nearly $50 million project, company officials say.
“Peak Drift sounded like the most exciting project I had seen across the country,” Kinart-Short said. “So, I moved here for this project and I’m really, really excited to (work on) the build-up for it. ... I was looking for something in the brewing world to give me a challenge and to learn more from what I had seen. This project was unlike anything that already existed, or anything that was even in the works or being proposed.”
The overall Peak Drift project is being launched by siblings Greg and Sara Middleton, whose family has been a key player in the Columbia hospitality scene in recent years, particularly in the area of the 1600 block of Main Street, where the family owns the tony Smoked restaurant and Grand on Main restaurant and bowling alley, among a number of other businesses.
Officials with Peak Drift are aiming to start production and distribution of Peak Drift beverages at the North Main Street site before the end of the year and are eyeing late spring or early summer 2023 for opening the larger complex to the public.
Peak Drift beer, seltzers and other beverages are already available from the microbrewery at Smoked restaurant at 1643 Main St. When the production at the large facility at 3452 North Main gets up and running at full steam, Kinart-Short said a plethora of beers, hard seltzers, hard ciders and more will be made at the facility, which has a unique all-in-one canning and bottling line and will have a state-of-the-art digital can printer.
The building at 3452 North Main was originally built in the 1940s and was operated for years by Stone Manufacturing. It was a garment factory for decades, but the property has now been vacant for a number of years. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2020, with the National Park Service noting the building’s history as a “locally significant example of a garment manufacturing facility and an important element of the diversified industrial growth in postwar Columbia, South Carolina.”
Columbia’s Main Street has seen a revival in the last decade. Just north of the S.C. State House, a once moribund section of the street is now lined with bars, shops, hotels, restaurants, a movie theater, the city’s art museum and more. Main Street just north of Elmwood Avenue also has increasingly become a cool place for residents to hang out, with spots such as the Vino Garage, War Mouth, Indah Coffee, Curiosity Coffee Bar, Il Focolare Pizzeria and others leading to a commercial renaissance for the area.
And now Peak Drift is aiming for revitalization farther up North Main, in a spot located just south of the Eau Claire community. Peak Drift Beverages director of sales and operations Jason Snyder said he thinks the brewery and larger complex can serve as an anchor that could help spur other businesses and services to give North Main as shot.
He also said he thinks it could be a go-to spot not only for local residents, but also visitors from out of town.
“It’s super exciting, and I think it is going to be a really, really awesome tourist attraction,” Snyder said. “It really should be. I know how many times I’ve driven somewhere and looked at a map and went, ‘Oh, if I just go right over here, I can hit this brewery on the way.’ This is the same idea. ... There’s a lot of thought processes that go into what we are doing here.”
This story was originally published September 2, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
