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In 2014, Mike and Melinda Coghill moved from Vancouver to Port Moody and opened a craft brewery named in honour of their golden lab.
"Yellow Dog" hit hard -- hard enough to win the Coghills numerous awards and garner a rabid fan base that continues today.
Now they're at it again, this time with lifelong friends as partners. And sometime before the end of 2020, Mike and Melinda's latest beer-centric project, in the town they "fell in love with" as tourists several years ago, will finally open to the public.
It's called Neighbourhood Brewing, and anyone who's recently navigated the downtown streets knows exactly where it is. Two storeys tall and dramatically dressed in brick and iron and stylish illuminated signage, it transforms the corner of Winnipeg and Westminster.
Monday afternoon PentictonNow toured the still-under-construction interior of the massive facility, and took about ten seconds to realize that yes, it looks just as massive there too.
In post-COVID times, the joint will comfortably seat in excess of 400 thirsty people. And it'll do so spaciously.
Inside, seating is spread over two levels, including an elongated ground floor with an equally elongated bar, a corner fireplace enshrined in a soaring column of brick, and a building-wide cutout in the second floor above that effectively offers patrons a colossal eight-meter ceiling.
But more often those patrons will be glancing outside. Between its two fully functional, fully windowed garage doors, one a single and the other a double, and a third bank of windows that mimics another garage door, the west wall is a wonderland of glass.
That sense of spaciousness continues upstairs on the mezzanine (nicknamed the "Rec Room," with a second bar and soon to be fitted with multiple video screens and arcade games like Skee Ball), where every seat would seem to have a great view to the mountains in the west and some also down to the brewery room on the main floor.
The décor is anything but cutesy. Long runs of red brick, hints of natural wood, a liberal sparkling of iron girders, and of course all those windows. Essentially, if you like what Neighbourhood's serving up on its exterior, you'll dig the interior too.
Outside, a street-level patio that seats 150 runs across the entire Winnipeg Street façade and curls around both the east and west edges of the structure. With those garage doors open, it'll be easy to lose track of where the interior ends and the exterior begins.
And then there's the heart of the venue -- the brewery. It'll likely be up and running by the end of this week, and with six 5,000-liter fermenters lined up side by side, it's geared to crank out copious product.
It's also designed to appeal to the many visitors that'll one day filter in. According to Mike Coghill, "We tried to make the brewery so it wasn’t a cavernous dungeon. So we've been able to add windows and other things you don't find in many breweries. That allows up to do more tours and showcases of what happens in the back."
As for beer volume, Coghill would only say, "Each batch of beer we make is 2500 liters. We're sized appropriately to begin with and we have room to expand."
Over at the other side of the building is Neighbourhood's kitchen. It's a full kitchen that today remains under wraps for the most part, but before the end of the year it'll pump out a variety of food.
Coghill, who maintains that Neighbourhood will be "a brewery first and a restaurant second," says the food focus will be tacos and burritos. He wouldn't elaborate further, except to add that a chef was hired "a few months ago."
And one other thing. There'll be a take-out window where, said Coghill, "People can grab food and beer and not have to come in. It'll be a good thing during COVID, and with beer now okay on the beach just down the street, people will have quick access to that."
We asked Coghill what it's been like creating a brewery during a pandemic, and he said there's been minimal impact.
"It affects you where you don't think it will affect you. In the procurement of items, stuff you're getting over the border, delays and stuff like that. Like everything else these days it threw us a few challenges, but we've adapted and we're making sure we take our time and get it right."
But he readily admits that designing and constructing from scratch has had its rewards.
"I think what makes us distinctive is that we built a building for the purpose of a brewery. We did it from the ground up. That comes with hiccups, but in the grand scheme of things it's our vision of what Neighbourhood Brewing should be."
For more on Neighbourhood Brewing, the latest in a recent surge of food and drink establishments to appear in the zone roughly centered around the Westminster and Winnipeg intersection, hit up its website.
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