A Minnesota based brewer is expanding to Wisconsin for the second time.
Lift Bridge Brewing has announced they are expanding to Hudson, Wisconsin. Just last year the Stillwater-based craft beer brewer opened a new brewery and taproom in New Richmond, Wisconsin. Their next move is expected to take place next June.
Dan Schwarz is co-founder and CEO of Lift Bridge Brewing and he says Hudson is a natural fit for them.
“We’re really rooted in the St. Croix Valley, share a lot of the same values with the Hudson community and they’re very similar to Stillwater and the rest of the area,” says Schwarz.
Their new 35,000-square-foot site in Hudson will feature a restaurant, event space, and a 17,000 square foot beer garden.
“We were approached about the project to redevelop the site, the former dog track, and they were looking for a brewery to be next to their stadium.”
The five-acre site in Hudson was once St. Croix Meadows, a greyhound racing track that opened in 1991. The track closed in 2001 and sat vacant until Woodbury developer Hudson Gateway, LLC bought the site and tore it down to make way for a mixed-use development. It is an investment of somewhere between $175 and $225 million.
The new Lift Bridge site will be next to the new stadium for the St. Croix River Hounds of the Northwoods Baseball League.
“And it also gives us an opportunity right now in Stillwater where we do a lot of production for kind of our core beers,” Schwarz tells WCCO. “But this will allow us to do more one-off beers, more innovation and experimentation. So we’re not closing Stillwater, we’re keeping it open. It’ll just allow us to do more fun things here too.”
Lift Bridge Brewing was part of an ongoing push at the State Capitol to lift the state's growler cap. Under the old law, Lift Bridge could sell growlers and crowlers, but was quickly approaching the 20,000 barrel threshold that would have taken those sales away.
“We’re excited, we’re going to be able to continue to sell growlers,” Schwarz says about the bill’s passage. “We’re pumped about it and all breweries are going to benefit for it here in the state.”
A bill signed into law in May lifted the cap to 150,000 barrels a year.
