A plan to expand the Big Woods family of companies has passed its first government board, but still has quite a climb to go.
After hearing about an hour of debate from a packed audience, the Brown County Area Plan Commission voted 4-1 on Jan. 24, with one other member abstaining and one absent, to recommend rezoning 94 acres of Firecracker Hill to general business instead of forest reserve and residential.
Business is the type of zoning that the owners of Big Woods restaurants, Quaff ON! Brewing Company and Hard Truth Distilling Company, need to build a new tourist attraction in the woods next to the Brown County fairgrounds.
The current vision is to build a combination brewery, distillery and bottling facility of at least 10,000 square feet, co-owner Jeff McCabe told the crowd at the APC meeting.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]A map they had shown at a town council meeting and at a project Q&A meeting in January showed a second large building near Brown County Memorial Park Cemetery, labeled as a future brewery expansion. But McCabe said that due to public input, the owners had decided to put distilling and brewing under one roof instead.
Another, smaller building is still planned for the back parcel of the two they’re buying. It will be used to store liquor for aging, the owners said.
Buildings are planned to go on about 5 acres of the 94 acres the companies will own, co-owner Ed Ryan said.
With the rest of the land, the plan is to keep it undeveloped, much like Brown County State Park, McCabe said. Eventually, the owners may carve out picnic areas, vistas, a driving path or walking/mountain biking trails. But they won’t be selling off the woods to other businesses, Ryan said.
What would become of the “unused” acreage was a major concern of people who spoke up at the APC meeting and Jan. 19 town council meeting. With so much land zoned for general business, they worried that more of it eventually would be developed.
“I’m selfish,” Ryan said. “I want that space just for us. I want it to be the coolest distillery in the Midwest.”
Four people brought concerns about the project before the town council. None spoke for it except Ryan.
At a meeting four days later at Big Woods Village led by the company owners, everyone who spoke up was hopeful.
The crowd at the APC meeting was mixed. Before comments were cut off, 12 spoke for the project — several of them Big Woods employees who were there with their families — and 10 voiced a concern or nonsupport.
Concerns included increased traffic and crime; the morality of increased alcohol consumption and production and its effect on Brown County’s reputation as an art community; black mold contaminating area homes as a byproduct of liquor production; noise; brewing odors; urban sprawl; lack of specificity on what is being built; and unknown financial effects on the community, like road repair and increased need for services.
Several speakers mentioned odors. Mike Dickey, a neighbor to the current Quaff ON! brewing building on North State Road 135, compared it to “stale beer on a summer day” and said it was so overpowering he couldn’t open his windows. Neighbors near Firecracker Hill were worried that odor would reach their yards, too, as well as the schools campus and downtown Nashville.
“There is no way the odor from this place will be smelled in downtown Nashville, Indiana,” Ryan said.
Brewer and partner Tim O’Bryan said one of the benefits of building a brewery from the ground up instead of using a building that used to be a bowling alley is that the new place can be built for this purpose, with smell-containment equipment.
Ryan promised neighbors that that would happen, and that all brewing would cease at the 135 North building, which is closer to any homes than the new building would be.
Brown County Redevelopment Commission and Brown County Council member Keith Baker, who’s also a neighbor to the project site, said the redevelopment commission supports the expansion because of the types of jobs it will create, the low impact it’s expected to have on the land and the view that craft brewing and distilling is an art form, too.
“We believe what you’re trying to do is in the best interest of Brown County and it fits the model of what we’re trying to bring to Brown County,” Baker said.
He said that adding nearly 43 acres back onto the tax rolls that have been in property tax-exempt “forest reserve” zoning is another positive.
New Coffey Hill homeowner Jeff O’Bryan, a neighbor to the new project site, said he was looking forward to being able to ride a bike to work if sidewalks are extended and roads improved in that area, as the owners mentioned.
Paul Navarro was the only APC member to vote “no.” He had been critical of the project at the town council meeting, asking for a traffic study and a fiscal impact study, which hadn’t been done yet.
A fiscal impact study is required if the town annexes the 94 acres as a part of Nashville. The study will look at what services, such as police, fire protection, utilities and road maintenance, the town would have to provide by taking in this land, based on estimates of similar areas which are already part of town.
But at the public hearing Jan. 19 about annexation, town council member David Rudd voted against hiring a firm to do the study because he didn’t think he had enough information on how that much general business-zoned land would be used. Council President “Buzz” King said another vote would be taken on that when all council members were present.
In front of the APC audience, John Douglas argued that the jobs, tax revenue and sales revenue that Big Woods’ owners have brought are “not really helping out anyone here.”
“We’ve never had a lot of revenue in Nashville. Brown County has always been like this. You grow up here, you move out. It’s a small, rural community. You’re not going to benefit anyone here except a few business people, and you’re going to develop Nashville to the point where it’s going to be difficult to live here and there’s no longer going to be any rural community,” he said.
Several Big Woods employees disagreed, as did resident Robyn Bowman.
Over the past 10 years or so, Brown County has lost manufacturing jobs — more than 150 when the sock factory burned — tax revenue and hundreds of students in the school system, she said. Other communities are courting Big Woods, but the owners want to expand here, where they live.
“Why would anybody turn their back on them?” Bowman said. “They have 100 staff just in this county alone. And this is their corporate offices. I mean, we would jump at Cummins bringing their corporate offices here.
“Quit digging up nasty stuff. We have no young kids in our county. … I would love for my kid to go to college and come back here. But what’s he going to come back to if all the seniors in this county at this point in time run everybody off? Stop it. Pay attention, Enjoy what they’re giving us and pat them on the back,” she said to applause, hoots and hollers.
The Brown County Commissioners are the next officials the rezoning request needs to pass. That meeting is set for Wednesday, Feb. 1.
If it passes, the project will still need to clear at least a half-dozen more steps of approval and several other public meetings before the owners could break ground.
Ryan said if all goes well, they plan to be building this summer.
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Before the Hard Truth Hills project can start, it needs these approvals:
- Brown County Area Plan Commission for rezoning. A positive recommendation PASSED 4-1 Jan. 24 with one abstaining and one absent.
- Brown County Commissioners for rezoning. The APC’s vote was only a recommendation and the commissioners are not bound by it. SCHEDULED for 6 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 1 at the County Office Building.
- Nashville Town Council for the annexation process. A public hearing took place Jan. 19. Before any annexation vote can be taken, a fiscal study must be done looking at areas closely resembling that area already in town to estimate fire calls, police calls, sewer and water usage and road impact, said Town Attorney James T. Roberts. A vote to do that study FAILED 2-1 with two council members absent Jan. 19. The town council president said another vote will be taken at a meeting when all members can vote, but that date has not been scheduled. The council has to accept that study, then pass an annexation ordinance at a public meeting before the property is officially annexed, Roberts said.
- UPDATE: The town council will meet 3 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 2 at Town Hall and the agenda includes the Big Woods petition for annexation into the town of Nashville, the property commonly known as “Firecracker Hill” along Memorial Drive and Old State Road 46. This information was not available until after press time.
- There is debate about whether or not approval will be needed from the Brown County Regional Sewer District Board for sewer service. Nashville has its own sewer system and is able to provide service to land in town. But the sewer district board and town council have yet to come to agreement on who is currently responsible for serving areas that are not currently part of town. The regional sewer district doesn’t have a sewage plant or a signed agreement from a provider to treat its sewage.
- Town Hall for a certificate of appropriateness application from the town. That likely will require a review by two boards: the Technical Review Committee and the Development Review Commission. TRC hearings usually take place three weeks before a DRC meeting. At the TRC meeting, planning and zoning, representatives of utility companies and emergency services are invited to give input on what may need to be changed in the plans, said Nashville Chief Administrator Phyllis Carr.
- The Nashville Development Review Commission for a public hearing, checking how buildings, landscaping and signs fit the town’s guidelines. If the DRC issues a certificate of appropriateness, that approval will be filed with the planning and zoning office and the building department will issue a building permit, Carr said.
- State officials for alcohol permits. Big Woods co-owner Jeff McCabe said the owners are working with the state to fine-tune what permits are needed because the laws haven’t quite kept up with the fast-growing distilling and brewing industries. The owners may need approval from county, state or town boards for alcohol permits depending on what they ask for, Roberts said.
