GRAND RAPIDS, MI — In 1996, when Dave Engbers and Mike Stevens were looking for a location to open a microbrewery, the decision to open in the Brass Works Building was easy because, says Stevens, “it was the cheapest place in town.”

Why? Well, partly because of a now-expired Renaissance Zone tax credit that saved Founders Brewing Co. $20,000 to $25,000 in annual state and local business taxes at the time on their former location at 648 Monroe Ave. NW.

There was a lot of nostalgia for tax credits and other public assistance tools that help entrepreneurs with gap financing headaches during a panel discussion among West Michigan brewery owners on Tuesday in Grand Rapids.

The panel was organized by the ICSC West Michigan Alliance Program on retail development at the DeVos Place Convention center. Moderated by Amy Sherman of the Great American Brew Trail television show, the panel speakers included:

• Mike Stevens of Founders Brewing Co. in Grand Rapids.

• Jason Spaulding of Brewery Vivant in Grand Rapids.

• Mark Sellers of BarFly Ventures (HopCat, Grand Rapids Brewing Co.)

• Tim Surprise of Arcadia Brewing Co. of Battle Creek

• Jeff Jacobson of the soon-to-open Unruly Brewing Co. in Muskegon.

Spaulding, who opened Brewery Vivant in a retrofitted 1900s historic funeral home in the East Hills neighborhood business district, said he nearly inked deals in Traverse City and Ann Arbor before the Grand Rapids space captured his attention.

Still, it took a whole year of zoning, permitting and financing approvals before construction could start, and then unexpected but mandated costs like creating a system to retain 100 percent of storm water runoff made Spaulding thankful for the grab-bag of historic preservation tax credits and tax increment financing (TIF) that helped offset the extra construction costs.

Sellers, who opened HopCat in early 2008, said his BarFly Ventures properties has taken advantage of everything from downtown development signage and façade grants, to TIF, brownfield, and state and federal historic tax credits. Both HopCat and the new Grand Rapids Brewing Co. are located in historic buildings in the Heartside District.

The company, which also owns Stella's Lounge and McFadden's in Grand Rapids, and is opening a second HopCat in East Lansing, employs about 246 people.

In 2011, under tax reform legislation, the state's brownfield and historic tax credits were replaced with new state programs that state officials say allows them to better-tailer assistance to a project, but which developers are still warming up to.

Stevens, whose hugely-popular brewery is in the middle of a $26 million expansion of the brewery built into the former truck dock on Grandville Ave. SW, said that with every expansion Founders has undertaken, the company has gone after some public money.

The latest expansion, designed to position the company for national impact, is projected to create 52 jobs in the next 3 years.

Related: Founders expands into Texas

“Every single project we’ve done is usually wrapped into that in an effort to free up more cash to tie up the loan you’re after,” he said.

The brewery got a $2 million performance grant from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation for the current expansion and a 12-year property tax break valued at $300,000 granted to the company by the city of Grand Rapids in November.

Surprise, whose Arcadia Brewing Co. is opening a new 30,000-square-foot facility on a downtown Kalamazoo brownfield this year, called city economic development staff members the “unsung heroes” in doing the grunt work of finding state and federal dollars that help offset development costs.

Arcadia is getting $1 million in state grants on the project, which has been called a "model of urban core development."

Jacobson, whose brewery will make the first in the city of Muskegon since Prohibition, said the process of opening was delayed by six months while the city updated its zoning language to add breweries and brewpubs as approved land uses.

The brewery saved a lot of money, he said, by locating in the Russell Block Market business incubator, which had some space already at white box status in downtown Muskegon.

With Michigan’s craft beer industry in “hyper growth” mode, Stevens said the key for new players is to focus on “making kick ass beer.”

“I think the industry will keep growing without incentives,” he said.

Email Garret Ellison or follow him on Twitter.