One of the most unfortunate situations in Downtown Mobile is the struggle to maintain a brewery in the Sangrouber-Van Antwerp Building at 225 Dauphin St.
The Hurricane Brewery opened in 2006 and closed its doors at the end of 2009. Before that it was Mr. Jim’s Cannon Brew Pub and the Port City Brewery.
Although early reports said the Hurricane Brewery may reopen, according to one of the owners (Kate Lotito Arrington) at least part of the building will be converted to office space and there are no immediate plans to reopen. Arrington says she has “cried and cried” over the brewery’s fate.
Mobile’s has a long history of local breweries which dates to the 1800s – see Kevin Lee’s excellent 2008 Lagniappe article on the Bienville Brewery and others.
Port City Brewery opened in 1993 with a $1.3 million renovation after the Alabama Legislature passed a law allowing breweries only in historic buildings (that had previously operated as a brewery).
Now, not only are we one of the few mid-size southern cities without a hometown brew, but we have lost another downtown draw.
Why?
Partly because of the general lack of support for local businesses according to some. Modern Brewery Age: It’s really a tough market in the Southeast, Hal and Mal’s (Jackson, MS) co-owner Malcolm White said, because consumers have been “brainwashed by major brewing companies.”
But also because the Alabama Legislature failed to pass a law (Alabama Brewery Modernization Act) that would have allowed local breweries to market and distribute their beers outside the breweries – i.e. in stores. As of now, Alabama’s brew pub’s beer cannot be sold except on-premises and they must also operate a restaurant with a seating capacity of 80+ people. (Breweries that sell off-premises, on the other hand, can’t offer samples or sell their beers from their taproom, and can only sell to wholesalers.) As is typical, this law makes ZERO sense.
According to Arrington passage of this bill may have made a brewery in Mobile financially viable.
Most beer drinkers don’t like to talk to politicians but this is worth the exception – when it comes up again. The bill is available on the Free The Hops website. Talking points here. Mod Mobilian will help publicize the issue to get this common sense bill passed.
Apparently there is no impetus to get this done as the beer-related bills died in commitee and/or failed to come up for a vote in the House. Where were our state representatives from Mobile during this? And now Mobile has no brewery.
We hope this could be changed in time to resurrect the brewery but that would take a big effort to get the state legislators off their tookuses and beat back the prohibitionists. Maybe the Downtown Mobile Alliance and other local organizations could assist in this effort. Maybe some sort of deal on the lease can be worked out – it’s better than a vacant building.
This is a big deal for Downtown Mobile that we have not heard anything about recently.
In the meantime, watch for Hurricane Brewery T-shirts on-sale online as mementos of Mobile’s past. As long as we have that big, empty brewery to look at we might as well remember the good times.
