Come inside for the craft beer, tolerate typically archaic Prohibition-era blue laws and decry interference from the multinational monopolists … but stay for the section below detailing what South Florida government is doing to lure breweries to the area.
And then there’s us. We’re all here because we’re not all there.
How are those two way streets coming, anyway?
Craft beer business bubbles up in South Florida, by Evan Benn (Miami Herald)
… South Florida’s beer drinkers aren’t the only ones who seem to be rooting for craft breweries to succeed. Local governments also have been welcoming breweries with open arms and checkbooks.
Oakland Park, seeking to build up its downtown Culinary Arts District, sent a community-development employee to a high-end beer festival in Washington, D.C., with instructions to find a brewery to lure to the city, according to Linn. The staffer happened to run in to Ryan Sentz, who founded Funky Buddha in 2007 as a Boca Raton hookah bar that he eventually turned into a brewpub.
“The city didn’t even know about us, but we were looking for a location at that time, and we liked the Fort Lauderdale area’s central proximity to Miami and Palm Beach, so it worked,” Linn said.
Oakland Park spent $400,000 on a community plaza that doubles as Funky Buddha’s front patio and occasional band stage, he added.
Brignoni and his father, Luis C. Brignoni, opened Wynwood Brewing in October with the help of a $420,000 government loan. The seven-year, interest-free loan, which requires no payments for the first two years, came from funds from the federal government’s Community Development Block Grants but is administered by the city.
The Brignonis and their investors contributed another $900,000 to get the brewery running …
