GRANDVILLE, MI — Ron Denning thinks that Grandville needs a lot more "local" in its locality.

So, in a city where the hospitality environment is dominated by the chain-heavy Rivertown Parkway, Denning, a Grandville High School teacher, is opening a microbrewery that aims to become a community centerpiece along the newly improved downtown Chicago Drive streetscape.

Osgood Brewing Co., owned by Denning and his wife, Mindy, will open next summer in the former Elders Appliance space at 4051 Chicago Drive SW.

The brewery is named after the city’s first tavern, which opened in 1837.

The couple hopes the establishment will be a development catalyst in a downtown area that has all but finished a $2.5 million streetscape project designed to improve the safety, walkability and the overall aesthetic of the downtown thoroughfare.

“We want to do something that will help the downtown flourish,” said Denning. “We think that if a brewery comes in, it might be the type of thing that other businesses, which may have been reluctant to come back here, could look at and say ‘maybe we should give downtown Grandville another look.’”

Osgood Brewing Co. will be located in a 7,500-square-foot space on the corner of Chicago Drive and Franklin Street SW across from the Chicago Drive Pub & Grill.

Denning plans to rotate a tap lineup of mainstay beers as well as seasonal, a few high-gravity selections, and limited availability experimental beers brewed on a 10-barrel system with four 7-barrel fermenters.

On his blog, Denning already has zeroed-in on a beer-style lineup, which includes an American wheat ale, pale ale, amber ale, IPA, robust porter and English stout.

Kitchen offerings would be off a simple, locally sourced menu of “unique” pizzas, such as a barbeque pulled-pork pizza using meat smoked on-site, he said.

His microbrewery license allows for distribution, which he said is “something we’d like to do as soon as possible.”

That would be just kegs to area bars at first, but bottles are a consideration down the road. The license precludes liquor sales, although Denning said he may apply for wine-making and artisan spirits licenses in the future.

Denning said he got into home brewing thanks to his brother-in-law, who pushed him into the hobby. He’s been at it for about seven years, making regular trips to Siciliano’s Market in Grand Rapids as he graduated from simple extract brewing to the more complicated, but more uniquely tailored, all-grain beer brewing.

He started putting the business plan together in May and spent the summer lining up financing and working with lawyers, accountants and meeting with the Grandville-Jenison Chamber of Commerce, which he said is keen to the brewery idea. The streetscape project really helped move his vision forward, he said.

“We saw their vision and totally bought into what it could become,” he said.

The Southwest Side of greater Grand Rapids is ripe for a brewery, he said. Currently the closest breweries to the area are Pike 51 and White Flame in Hudsonville. Osgood would be Grandville-centric in terms of feel and décor, but could potentially pull in regular suburban clientele from the Walker, Wyoming, Jenison, Kentwood and Byron Center areas.

Frankly, he said, “I’m shocked that there’s not already a brewery in any of those cities.”

Although Grandville tends to have a reputation as conservative-minded place with stricter alcohol laws, the city is “getting younger” and there’s a lot of younger families moving into the neighborhoods around the downtown area, he said. “I think it’s not as conservative in some aspects as many people think.”

In the end, the aim is to create a kind of community "centerpiece" that pays homage to the area’s history through form and feel. Mindy Denning found the name “Osgood” reading the “Bend in the River,” a 1970s-era history book about the Grandville-Jenison area written by John W. McKee.

The original Osgood Tavern was started by Hiram Osgood, Kent County’s first district attorney and located at the corner of Wilson Avenue and White Street. According to McKee, the very first service of the First Congregational Church of Grandville was conducted in the Osgood Tavern's dining room.

The American Amber Ale at Osgood Brewing Co. will be named "Oakestown," an ode to an early name for Grandville based on the name of city father Charles Oakes.

“We want Grandville to have something that is unique; something that is Grandville’s own; something that is not a chain,” he said. “I think people want that.”

For more information, check out Osgood Brewing Co. on Facebook.

Email Garret Ellison or follow him on Twitter.