Mystery brewery to open downtown with $200,000 from Battle Creek Unlimited

New Holland Brewing Co. isn't the only brewery coming to downtown Battle Creek in 2019.

Battle Creek Unlimited has awarded $200,000 to a local startup brewery that will be opening on the first floor of the building at 15 Carlyle St. The building itself will go to Restore (269), a development company founded by local couple Caitlynn and Cody Newman with the goal of restoring local buildings.

City leaders won't name the brewery, which will be a local startup, or say who is involved. The individuals who will run it still work for competing interests and have not been named in connection with the project yet, said Battle Creek Unlimited President and CEO Joe Sobieralski.

New Holland Brewing Co. plans to open its Battle Creek location in the spring of 2019. The new startup brewery is aiming for fall that year.

“We’re staggering it with New Holland,” Sobieralski said. “So New Holland has 6 months, and it will give people options.”

At the end of December, Battle Creek Unlimited put out a request for proposals for three downtown properties — 15 Carlyle St., 64 W. Michigan Ave. and 119 W. Michigan Ave. — along with a request for proposals to breweries interested in coming to Battle Creek, offering up to $200,000 in financial assistance.

The 64 W. Michigan Ave. property was awarded to New Holland Brewing Co. earlier this month along with the $200,000.

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Battle Creek Unlimited had not initially planned to award more than one brewery with the $200,000.

“We received some very good proposals,” Sobieralski said. “And frankly, some of them teamed up and came up with multi-use facilities for the properties, and once we talked to people once the RFPs came in, it made sense to do more than one.”

The proposal put together by Restore (269) was one of those collaborative multi-use proposals.

“We really see there’s three kinds of crucial points to downtown lifestyles: living, playing and working, and between the two projects we’ve kind of hit on all of those,” Cody Newman said.

Cody and Caitlynn Newman bought the Ratti Building, at 115-117 W. Michigan Ave., in 2017. They live in that building, use another unit for short-term leasing through Airbnb and will be leasing the first floor as office space. The development of that property has gone well enough that the couple was inspired to continue their work with the 15 Carlyle St. property.

“We’re really passionate about downtown,” Cody Newman said. “We see a lot of potential. When this one became available, we own the lot between them, and Caitlynn’s vision was really great for the building, so we had to put up a proposal.”

Caitlynn Newman’s vision is threefold. The first floor is going to the brewery, the second office space and the top floor an event space that they will run.

“All those historic details and character are pretty much there, and we just want to bring it to life and restore it and share it with the community,” Caitlynn Newman said. “We knew that, other than McCamly downtown, there’s not a lot of places for people to go for different events, concerts, a nice artisan market, something interesting to bring people together, and that’s our goal, not only restoration development but having some impact on our community, making it a more positive place to be.”

They already have tenants interested in the second floor office space, Cody Newman said.

The Newmans plan to invest about $1.2 million into the project. Construction is planned for fall, with the event and office spaces open in the summer of next year.

The building will be rebranded as the Record Box, a reference to the fact that it was built for the Record Printing and Box Company, which manufactured paper cartons and cereal boxes.

Restore (269) will host an open house of the Record Box during Spring into the Arts on May 18.

Contact Natasha Blakely at (269) 223-0114 or nblakely@battlecreekenquirer.com. Follow her on Twitter at @blakelynat.