From ‘Daily Report’: Citing restrictions on brewers, Noble Wave scraps plan for Baton Rouge brewpub
The founders of Noble Wave, a brewpub with a “conscious capital” business model that planned to open in the Electric Depot development on Government Street, are scrapping their Baton Rouge plans and say they’re taking their concept to Oregon.
Noble Wave billed itself as the first brewpub in Baton Rouge where beer would be brewed and sold onsite. The founders, Riley Vannoy and Karl Schultz, planned to pay employees full salaries and benefits, and donate half of the tips earned to community-enhancement projects as part of their “conscious capital” ethos.
But in recent months, the two determined that Louisiana’s restrictions on beer sales and distribution made the project too risky to move forward with in Baton Rouge.
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“We don’t want to scare anyone away from opening a brewpub here,” Vannoy says. “Our biggest thing was that it was just riskier to open it here when we were handcuffed by what we could do legally.”
The news comes as Electric Depot begins construction next week, culminating several years of planning for the $20 million redevelopment project at the former Entergy site in Mid City. Work on phase one of the project should be completed by December 2018, says Dyke Nelson, who is developing the project alongside the East Baton Rouge Redevelopment Authority.
That phase will have four buildings on Government Street and a three-story entertainment center with a bowling alley, restaurant, bar and private event space. Other tenants are expected to include a fitness center with healthy food offerings, brewpub, photography studio and coffee concept. Specific tenants will be announced next month, Nelson says.
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