CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Local entrepreneurs are planning another brewery in Ohio City, the Cleveland neighborhood that has remade itself with a heavy emphasis on hops and malts.

If Paul Benner and Justin Carson succeed, though, the newest player will be more business incubator than beer joint.

Benner, 30, owns a home-brewing shop in Tremont, where he is flooded with demand from would-be brewers. Carson, the 31-year-old founder of JC BeerTech Ltd., recently bought a Lorain Avenue building in Ohio City and plans to move his company, which installs and cleans draft-beer lines in five states, there from Medina this year.

Together, the pair came up with Platform Beer Co., a brewery that will occupy the building's first floor. As its name suggests, Platform will act as a springboard for home-brewers hoping to turn a hobby into a career.

On top of brewing their own beers, Benner and Carson expect to provide space, equipment and start-up assistance to experienced home-brewers with bigger dreams. They're likely to use a model called alternating proprietorship, where responsibility for brewing, supervision and taxes can be shifted from one company to another.

The details are still in flux, and the project has to jump regulatory hurdles. But Platform could open at 4125 Lorain Ave. by mid-2014, with a tasting room and a 10-barrel system that can churn out 20 kegs per batch.

This building, at 4125 Lorain Ave. in Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood, will house a brewery and brewing incubator on the first floor and the offices of JC BeerTech upstairs.

"It's not just another brewery," Benner says. "The last thing I want is for a project I'm associated with to be viewed as just another opportunity to take advantage of a trend."

The Platform project, which will be unveiled at a community meeting Wednesday night in Ohio City, builds on the explosive growth of home-brewing and beer culture

The craft brewing industry, populated by small, largely independent producers, grew 15 percent by volume and 17 percent by revenues in 2012, according to the Brewers Association in Boulder, Colo. Though it's still a sliver of the overall market, small brewing is, increasingly, big business.

Amateur production also is spreading. The American Homebrewers Association estimates that more than 1 million people brew beer at home at least once a year. Most of them are hobbyists, and the aspiring producers often struggle to make the expensive jump from small-batch brewing in the basement to commercial brewing for paying customers.

"Inside every home-brewer, deep down, is somebody who thinks they can go pro," said Todd Donnelly, a pharmacist who, in his free time, leads the SNOBs -- the Society of Northeast Ohio Brewers.

"This is a very novel idea," he said of the Platform project. "It sounds like a fascinating model. I'm just curious if it would ever expand much beyond glorified hobbyist. The challenge you have right now is, if you walk into any store, there is a limited amount of space to sell on. That's where what you're starting to see right now is market saturation."

Carson said he and Benner plan to focus their distribution efforts on restaurants and bars -- not stores -- and build on JC BeerTech's relationships. The company is the North American distributor of a beer-line cleaning liquid that changes color to signal that draft lines are dirty.

"We believe that we are doing a unique thing with a lot of business sense," Carson said.

Alternating proprietorship isn't a new idea, but it's still rare in the brewery world. Another option is contract brewing, where a home-brewer will pay a local brewery with excess capacity to produce his beer.

In Northeast Ohio, the opportunities for home-brewers to use professional equipment are limited to businesses like the Brew Kettle, a brewpub in Strongsville that provides the recipes, ingredients and expertise. But variations on the incubator idea are popping up in other states, including Texas.

"I haven't heard about anybody doing this in the country, let alone Northeast Ohio," Donnelly said of Benner and Carson's concept. "So I think they're definitely onto something."

In Cleveland, Platform will occupy a space that once housed a Czech social club, a bowling alley and, more recently, an antique shop. Next door, a coffee shop and bistro called Plum is in the works. Plum will provide small bites for the Platform tasting room, and the two businesses will share a backyard beer garden.

More focused on production than consumption, Platform won't hold typical bar hours, Benner said. When the tasting room is open, patrons will be able to try Platform beers and samples from guest brewers.

The city of Cleveland has approved a $50,000 forgivable loan, through a program aimed at vacant properties, for the JC BeerTech renovations. Public records show that Carson bought the building in March, and construction of the second-floor offices is under way.

With 15 or so jobs upstairs from JC BeerTech and the business-incubation component, neighborhood leaders also view the Platform project as more than just another brewery. It's a potential attention-getter for Lorain, a major corridor that hasn't seen as much investment as West 25th Street.

"To me, this is an economic-development project more so than it is a food-and-beverage project," said Eric Wobser, the executive director of the Ohio City Inc. neighborhood group. "It just happens to be building on the core strength of the brewing industry in Ohio City.

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