Columbia brewery touted taproom & bowling alley. Plans changed, and neighbors are upset
Night is beginning to fall on a recent evening at 3452 North Main St. in Columbia, home of Peak Drift Brewing.
About two dozen people — local social media influencers, some city and economic development officials, a few journalists — have been gathered to take a look inside the sprawling building, a large part of which houses Peak Drift’s beer production facility.
It has the visual and aesthetic hallmarks of a modern production brewery. There are rows of gleaming, towering stainless steel tanks used for making beer for Peak Drift and other breweries with which it contracts. There are forklifts and hoses and other industrial apparatus. One part of the buildings houses a state-of-the-art can printing operation, with which Peak Drift has reportedly produced more than 4 million cans for itself and three dozen other regional breweries in the last year-and-a-half.
There is much to see inside the Peak Drift facility, to be certain. But there is one long-touted amenity you won’t currently see in the building at 3452 North Main, and likely won’t see for the foreseeable future: a taproom.
Peak Drift, which is co-owned by Sara Middleton Styles and Greg Middleton, members of the influential Middleton family that operates a host of restaurants in downtown Columbia and elsewhere, announced it has pivoted from its plans of having a public taproom at the North Main Street facility. The prospect of a taproom was part of an aggressive plan that was initially announced about 3 years ago for the site on North Main, with other would-be aspects of the project including a duckpin bowling alley, an entertainment stage, a members-only gym, sand volleyball courts, a merchandise shop and more.
Now the company says it is shifting its focus for the North Main site and will operate it as a large-scale production facility and distribution center.
Some in the city and surrounding neighborhoods are expressing frustration that the project that was supposed to bring a hub of activity and recreation for the depressed area north of downtown Columbia has seemingly changed drastically. The team at the brewery says it was a necessary pivot in light of the economic realities since announcing its plans, and also points to a lingering legal action involving a road near the project as a related hurdle.
Downtown taproom
Peak Drift said in a release that it will “defer its plans for a customer-centric brewery at the North Main facility,” and subsequently named Smoked, the tony, upscale restaurant in downtown Columbia, the “official taproom” for Peak Drift beer. Smoked is owned by the Middleton family’s LTC Hospitality.
“Now that we’ve taken the time to get out of COVID and evaluate what we have here, long story short, with the production space and what we are doing and moving into, using this space [on North Main] for that currently makes the most sense,” Peak Drift CEO Jordan Styles told The State in an interview at the brewery. “We have over 40 taps at Smoked. We have a microbrewery there. I think we are doing ourselves a disservice to not lean into Smoked and use that as the taproom and use that as a place where you can enjoy a Peak Drift beverage.”
Styles added that the idea of a taproom one day being at the North Main facility was “not completely off the table.” But he also said, at the moment, Peak Drift is more focused on the production aspect at North Main.
“Right here, right now, there is far more space that we might grow into in terms of production,” Styles said of the North Main building.
Peak Drift officials said the North Main facility produces 35,000 beers per week, including Peak Drift’s own products and products it brews for other regional breweries. At least one major partnership came earlier this year, as Peak Drift and Columbia Craft came together under the banner Craft Brew, Inc., a move that was touted to “strengthen the craft beer industry in the Midlands and throughout South Carolina.” Both Peak Drift and Columbia Craft kept their respective brand identities after the deal.
Peak Drift’s beers can be found in stores and restaurants across the state, and the company also is part of a distribution group of American brewers in the United Kingdom.
LTC Hospitality vice president for marketing and events David Turner acknowledged that a taproom and restaurant were initially part of the plans at 3452 North Main, but said those plans have shifted for now, particularly with can printing operations ramping up.
“The focus of the business [at North Main] is moving to a manufacturing mode,” Turner told The State, adding there is “not a timeline” for a taproom at North Main. When asked if there might be a timeline for a taproom there in the future, Turner said “anything is possible.”
Sara Middleton Styles told The State that one other hurdle the project also has faced involves a would-be road closure near the North Main site. Back in 2021, Peak Drift sought to close a roughly 500-foot section of Phillips Street, the road that runs behind the brewery, in order to give pedestrians and customers who would park nearby a safer berth to the brewery site.
The company filed a lawsuit against the city of Columbia, which owns the roadway, in 2021, which Peak Drift attorney Joe McCulloch says is standard procedure in seeking a road closure. Sox and Freeman, a local tree removal company with facilities on Phillips Street, intervened in the lawsuit, opposing the closure, per state court records. The matter remains tied up in court, according to the state’s public court index.
“We are working it through the court system for the last couple of years, but it’s just too unsafe to have parking across the street from there with giant trucks coming up and down,” Middleton Styles said. “Until that happens, we couldn’t even think of putting [a taproom and other amenities] out there.”
Neighbors grapple with new reality
Meanwhile, residents of the neighborhoods near Peak Drift have expressed dismay, on social media and otherwise, in the days since word got out that the taproom plans had changed.
Ellen Fishburne is a longtime resident of the North Main Street area, and currently is an active member of the Hyatt Park-Keenan Terrace neighborhood association. Fishburne, a well-known local artist, is even the past president pf the Hyatt Park-Keenan Terrace group, which represents the two neighborhoods that surround the Peak Drift Brewing site.
Fishburne said she remembers several years ago when officials came to talk to the neighborhood association about the brewery project.
“We are fortunate when some businesses come to us beforehand seeking our approval,” Fishburne said. “Sometimes we do [approve], sometimes we don’t. This looked like a good fit.”
However, the artist now says many of her neighbors are upset that the facility will not have a taproom and other outward facing amenities, at least for the foreseeable future.
“We were looking forward to a restaurant, offices, a gym, an eating area on the outside, physical improvements to the outside,” Fishburne said. “And we were looking for our neighbors to be able to get jobs there.”
Fishburne was clear that she had no ill will toward the production facility aspect of Peak Drift and said she was glad to see the building back in use again after many years. Still, she is openly disappointed that the taproom side of the project hasn’t happened at 3452 North Main.
“I came to this neighborhood because of the wonderful diversity and the friendliness of all the people,” she said. “I’m the biggest cheerleader for this neighborhood that you will find. We love our home here we love the diversity of it and we were really hoping our neighbors would get some good jobs.”
Middleton Styles notes that, aside from the aforementioned attempt to get a section of Phillips Street closed, there are other factors that have led to Peak Drift changing its North Main plans. She said the project was launched several years ago amid the coronavirus pandemic, and the economic landscape, from interest rates to equipment costs and beyond, has continued to shift in the times since.
“We really just had to pivot everything moving forward,” Middleton Styles told The State. “Had we just moved forward with that being a taproom (on North Main), we’d have gone under during all those years of COVID. We just kind of had to say, ‘OK, what’s the business model that’s going to be successful?,” which is when we started shifting to the commercial (production) side of everything.”
‘Opportunity Zone’
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 later sat vacant for a number of years. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2020.
The Peak Drift Brewing project on North Main has long been touted by owners and others as being an Opportunity Zone project. There are more than 100 Opportunity Zones across SC, and they are typically in economically distressed areas that are given the special federal status to entice economic development by using tax credits.
Erin Curtis is a resident of the Elmwood Park neighborhood, which is north of Elmwood Avenue and south of the Peak Drift facility. She told The State she is “empathetic” to the idea that businesses sometimes have to change their plans, and was clear that she thought there is “grace to be given” in the fact that Peak Drift started several years ago in the uncertain wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But she also said there is disappointment among neighbors in the North Main area that the taproom plans have shifted.
“I think the biggest feeling [various neighbors near the project] have is disappointment,” Curtis said. “It’s not anger. It’s not, ‘We don’t like Peak Drift.’ It’s fair disappointment about what was going to be for them that now is no longer.
“When you go to all the neighborhood meetings and you pitch what you are doing and people are excited and they’ve been waiting for something like that in the neighborhood forever, and then it doesn’t happen, then disappointment is a totally reasonable and fair feeling to have.”
Aditi Bussells is an at-large member of Columbia City Council and lives in Columbia’s Earlewood neighborhood, not far from Peak Drift. She was among those in attendance at a recent reception at Smoked when Peak Drift’s taproom menu was announced for the restaurant.
Bussells said she has been hopeful for a dynamic experience, such as what was planned at Peak Drift’s North Main facility, for that part of town. However, she was quick to note she thinks the company and its products have added to the quality of life in Columbia.
“I’d love to see us have a kind of convening area in the North Main district, especially because a lot of those neighborhoods, including my own, were very excited for the potential foot traffic that can come from having the brewery,” Bussells said. “But I also understand how sometimes you have to pivot with market conditions. I have been in open conversation with the Middletons, and I like that they are very much open to seeing what they can do and that they are very invested in people being able to enjoy Peak Drift, no matter what form it takes.”
Middleton Styles left open a small crack in the door about the possibility of a future taproom at the facility on North Main.
“The idea is not shut off to doing a taproom in the future,” the Peak Drift co-owner said. “Just so many factors have gone into it where it is not going to happen right now. It’s unfortunate, because it’s something we really wanted to do.”
This story was originally published October 30, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
