In Astoria, Oregon’s Downtown Historic District, Jack Harris and Chris Nemlowill set up their brewery in the 12,000-square-foot Fort George building in 2006. The structure, built in 1924 on the site of the city’s original settlement, Fort Astoria, was definitely hurting. “Most of the windows were broken, and there were birds living in it, and standing water,” says Harris. But he and Nemlowill could see the potential in the former auto body shop, with its walls of windows and enormous wooden beams. They leased the space and named their company Fort George Brewery + Public House. In 2010, they purchased the building and the former car dealership next door, which now houses a second brewery and a taproom; both buildings are listed in the Oregon Historic Sites Database. “We’ve really tried to honor what the buildings looked like before,” says Harris. “The reason we were able to succeed was because of city leaders in the late 1980s and ’90s who had preserved the waterfront and made it accessible, and [because of] the strong historic preservation culture we have in this town.”

City leaders were also key to the success of the Georgia Beer Company, which started as a joke among friends. “We said when we won the lottery someday, we were going to hire all our buddies to hang out and drink beer,” says Chris Jones, Georgia Beer’s director of business development. Soon enough, it became serious. Jones and his college friend Jack “J. Ryce” Martin entered the local chamber of commerce’s business-plan contest, which led to a series of fruitful partnerships with city agencies. A friend in the zoning office alerted them to a vacant 1906 utilities building with soaring ceilings and arched windows. Because the city wanted the brewery and the tourism it would bring, it deeded the building to the Valdosta-Lowndes Development Authority, which offered the company a 15-year lease-to-own deal and funded the $850,000 renovation. Along with restoring the windows and exposing the original brick, Jones and Martin used an assortment of local and salvaged materials. “We wanted this building to look like it had been a brewery for 100 years,” says Jones. For their efforts, they received a City of Valdosta Distinguished Merit Award in 2019, the same year the brewery opened.