Other Half Brewery Will Open in Ivy City Warehouse

• October 17, 2018

by Nena Perry-Brown

Two and a half years ago, DC's Board of Zoning Adjustment approved plans to retrofit an Ivy City tomato packaging warehouse into a Compass Coffee café and roastery alongside office and retail space. Now, those plans are being repackaged for a hipper clientele.

UrbanTurf has learned that Brooklyn's Other Half brewery will open a DC outpost at the former Pappas Tomato Factory at 1401 Okie Street NE (map). The Douglas Development-owned property will also be home to a Compass Coffee and a Kick Axe axe-throwing lounge. The 70-seat restaurant Gravitas is already open on the ground floor. 

A revised zoning application for the warehouse requests special exceptions to add "Entertainment, Assembly and Performing Arts" and "Eating and Drinking Establishment" uses and roof deck bar/lounge space to the previously-approved plans. 

This would enable the project to deliver the following to the site:

• A location of Compass Coffee that would include cellar-level production space and a double-height, skylit retail and café space on the ground floor.
• Other Half Brewery, which would occupy 13,340 square feet of cellar-level distribution space, as well as a ground-floor bar and production space. 
• Office space on the second and third floors. 
• A location of Kick Axe, which would have axe throwing and lounge space on the ground floor and bowling and curling lanes with bar space on the second floor, with an adjacent rooftop lounge.
• A roof deck to Gravitas.

The new plans necessitate the addition of nearly 20,000 square feet of ground floor area to the proposed building. Design-wise, these programmatic changes compelled project architect Antunovich Associates to add a partial second story to the building's northeast corner, more space on the second and third stories of the southwest corner, and an extended ground floor on the building's southeast corner.

Other Half, co-founded by DC native Matt Monahan, has an almost cult-like following in beer circles. At a recent can sale near Union Market, hundreds of people lined up to purchase cans by the case-load from the Brooklyn brewer. 

The BZA will consider the proposal in mid-December; a Washington Post article about the axe-throwing craze (there is already such an establishment in Northeast) anticipates Kick Axe opening in 2019.

Rendering via Antunovich Associates.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/exclusive-other-half-brewery-will-open-in-ivy-city-warehouse/14579