Brewery Zoning for a Community Supported Brewery
At long last, our special use permit (SUP) was approved.
We knew from the very beginning that we wanted Siren Rock Brewing Company to be located right in the middle of the community in Rockwall, Texas. When we first laid eyes on our 1.25 acres of land in Downtown Rockwall back in 2017, we fell in love. It was the perfect size and the perfect location. The only problem - non brewery zoning.
We first approached Rockwall's City Council with our proposal for a downtown brewery in January 2018, but Rockwall's city ordinance did not allow a brewery to be built or operated in the downtown district.
After working closely with the city for months and gathering as much community support as possible, the city council approved a text amendment to its city ordinance in June of 2018 to allow for a craft brewery, distillery or winery to be built within the downtown district. Unfortunately, that was merely step one. Since the new city ordinance was written to also require a Specific-Use Permit or SUP from the City, then that was our next step.
What is a Craft Brewery?
This road (so far) of building a craft brewery has been educational. A good bit of time has been spent on educating everyone we meet about exactly what is a craft brewery, because its an industry that is about so much more than just beer. Also honestly, it's just more fun to talk about beer and brewing than zoning issues like setbacks, surveys, and detention ponds.
Ultimately being a community supported brewery project comes with learning and understanding exactly what it means to be a brewery in a community. That means understanding things like city regulations, traffic flow patterns, storage, water run-off, and parking. And let me tell you, we have learned a lot about city zoning.
Siren Rock Gets an SUP. Finally!
As was detailed quite well in this Rockwall Herald ARTICLE back in July, after successfully changing the city zoning to allow a brewery, we hit a few road blocks trying to secure our special use permit. I have planned a few future articles about the entire process of PLANNING AND BUILDING A BREWERY IN ROCKWALL, so I will save the majority of those fun juicy bits for later.
Right now I will just savor in the good news that with lots of community support for our yet-to-be-opened brewery project, our SUP WAS APPROVED, and we can now start working on building permits and making plans to break ground.