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Consequences in AH: The Beer that Built Your City

It was an easy retrofit - but the idea didn't seem to occur to most brewers! (Weinhard survived because they already had a sideline in soda pop.)
Which begs the question: what if, during Prohibition, more US brewers had reinvented themselves as ice cream producers? Would we be consuming Pabst Strawberry Storm or Budweiser Nut Delight?
 
Good article. There's a lot of a similar story here in Denver, with LoDo (Lower Downtown)'s revitalization in the 90s being in part heralded by the city's first craft brewery, Wynkoop, opening in 1988. And the architecture design followed suit with maintaining the older brick facades when converting the buildings in LoDo to restaurants or condominiums, and even into the design of Coors Field nearby when it was built.

It does make a lot of sense for breweries, and especially craft breweries, to be a early sign of potential gentrification in a neighborhood. Brewing needs a lot of space and it's expensive to do commercially so it needs somewhere with cheaper rent, so they're more likely to go in poorer, more industrial or warehouse areas. But the industry also tends to attract younger, wealthier, and more upscale customers, so once a brewery is established it creates a market for other more "hip" stores to move in nearby. It was a sign for LoDo with Wynkoop, and also kind of happened with Williamsburg in Brooklyn with Brooklyn Brewery.
 
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