Creemore Springs set to go on expansion

Eight years after Creemore Springs started planning internally for an expansion, the brewery is ready to begin construction.

Cowden Woods, the Barrie-based builders selected by the brewery to complete the work, is scheduled to begin staging on site the week of February 11. Construction is set to begin on February 19, and a groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for Friday, February 22.

Creemore Springs vice president and brewmaster Gordon Fuller and project and facilities manager Geoff Davies are pleased to be getting things underway so early in 2013, given all of the hurdles of the past few months. An application for an Environmental Compliance Approval for the expanded operation was submitted last October, with the Ministry of Environment predicting a turnaround time of three to eight months. That approval arrived on January 17, just three months after it was applied for. In the meantime, a final site plan was passed by the Liaison Committee and on January 23, a teleconference was held with the Ontario Municipal Board, resulting in a go-ahead order and a statement that the OMB member was “impressed with the atmosphere of the meeting.” Final site plan approval and a building permit came from Township this past Monday, and a pre-construction meeting was held with the Liaison Committee on Tuesday to determine things like haul routes and hours of construction operation.

It’s been determined that work will take place between the hours of 7 am and 7 pm on weekdays, with limited activity on Saturdays, and that trucks will access the site using County Road 9, Mary Street and Elizabeth Street. For safety reasons, the entire area of construction will be fenced.

From February until the end of May, work will be concentrated on the back of the brewery, where a number of new fermentation cellars are being added along with several other pieces of large infrastructure. Site work on the property – the “key sensitivity,” according to Davies, as it will involve major digging and earth-moving – will take place from May until the end of July, and the construction of the new warehouse on the south end of the building is scheduled for July to October. Ideally, landscaping will be completed in September, the best time for establishing new plants and trees.

The expansion’s second phase, which will see new office space and a new facade built on the front of the building, will enter the detailed design phase by the end of this year, with construction scheduled for late 2014 and early 2015.

If all goes well, the brewery will have its extra capacity online by May of this year. The move to 24-hour brewing will wait for the granting of a revised water-taking permit, which is still in the application phase. When all is said and done, the brewery will be able to complete 55 brews per week, up from the 27 it currently achieves.

The Liaison Committee, which includes Fuller, Davies and OMB appellants Paul Vorstermans and Austin and Christine Boake, as well as Councillor Thom Paterson and BIA president Corey Finkelstein, will take on a communications role with the village once construction begins. Watch the pages of the Echo for more on how that will work.

“All in all, I think this is a real success story for the community,” said Davies, who has been working extensively with brewery neighbours since starting with the company last year.