Brewery to open campus in Goochland

Hardywood Park Craft Brewery is quickly outgrowing its urban setting in Richmond.

The brewery, located in Richmond’s North Side, is expanding to Goochland County. The Goochland project will involve more than $28 million in private investment during the next five years and create 56 jobs.

Hardywood considered more than 150 sites before selecting a 24-acre location at West Creek Business Park. While other locations were promising, the company’s experience in the Richmond area, a generous incentive package and changing state self-distribution laws encouraged co-founders Eric McKay and Patrick Murtaugh to stay close to home.

The incentives included a $500,000 grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund, a $400,000 performance-based grant from the Virginia Investment Partnership Grant and a $250,000 grant from the Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development Fund, with Goochland dedicating up to $1 million in matching funds.

Hardywood West in Goochland will have facilities for brewing, packaging and distributing beer. It also will offer a tap room and beer garden, bocce courts, a food truck plaza, an amphitheater for live performances and walking trails along the Tuckahoe Creek.

Hardywood is on track to produce 15,000 barrels of beer this year, almost doubling last year’s output. The Goochland facility, expected to open in spring 2017, will allow Hardywood to increase annual production to more than 30,000 barrels. The company now distributes in Virginia, the District of Columbia and eastern Pennsylvania. It plans to expand to more East Coast markets, including North Carolina, Maryland and New York.

Hardywood will continue to invest in its Richmond brewery, using it as “a creative playground of sorts, where we can encourage our brewers to keep coming up with creative and interesting recipes,” says McKay.

Murtaugh and McKay started home brewing in 2001 after sampling home-brewed beers on an Australian sheep farm known as Hardywood Park. They began Hardywood in 2011. “I think for us, the expansion kind of demonstrates a dream come true,” McKay added. “I think I’m nervous for sure, but I feel less nervous than when we first opened because we’ve got a track record.”