This is not just a post about a Fifty West expansion. Hang in there with me on this one… there’s a lot to unpack. The Hamilton County Parks evidently finally got the funding together to complete the phase of the bike trail that runs behind Fifty West… which means the campus just took on a new life. A recent filing with the Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission this month gives us a really fantastic picture of what that all means… but it’s long, and it’s boring – so I’m going to do my best to summarize it for you.

What Has Been Planned Already

Back when Fifty West took over their current production brewery space and started working on it, the plans for what they were doing included two phases. The first phase of their plans is what you’ve seen so far. The taproom/brewery construction. A new cooler in the back of the building was added. The conversion was impressive – and definitely took the brewery into a new era.

What you might not realize is that the plans also included a phase two project that has not yet been done. This second phase included some interesting things:

• A rooftop patio/beer garden
• A 40x30ft brewery expansion for tank storage
• A 5,100 sq ft expansion of the new cooler
• Another rooftop patio on top of a new 8,000 square foot building at the extreme end of the property.

This new plan is an adjustment to those previous “Phase Two” plans for their space. An improvement, as the needs of the brewery, have been better identified. Some things have been scrapped completely, some things changed around a bit.

Pizzelli’s Becomes A Burger Joint

A big part of the new, revised plans would make what you now know (or knew, before it closed) as Pizzelli’s become a Fifty West ‘Burger Joint’ providing you a great place to sit down and have some food and some beer, the same way you currently do on the other side of the road.

The building would get an extensive remodel that would update it to the new look of the brewery (more on that in a minute) and tie it in pretty closely with the space between the two.

The side of the restaurant that faces the volleyball courts would be converted into a big, 80x75ft beer garden which would give us a new 2,250 square feet of outdoor dining (and drinking) space. There would be pass-through windows on the side of the building that would let you get walk-up food and drinks from the beer garden. It looks great!

New Room For Activities

If you know Fifty West (and you’re on a Cincy Beer Blog, so you should know about Fifty West by now), you know that these guys are into the lifestyle that comes alongside their brand. Volleyball, canoeing, biking, running… its all tightly intertwined with 50 West at this point, and this expansion only brings even more of that to the mix.

The back corner of the Volleyball Court area that is closest to the new beer garden will be home to a new kid’s area – because kids deserve to play too, right? This 20×15 foot sand play area will enable a place where your kids can do what they do best while you get to hang out in the sunshine with a beer in your hand. As a parent? I freaking love this.

Behind the restaurant there are plans to construct an 80×50 foot outdoor “sports area” that includes turf and walls. In the rendering they’ve got this set up like a soccer field, but I assume it can take on a new life depending on what the needs are from time to time.

Like I said… more room for activities.

The Brewery Itself

The actual brewery building itself is set to receive a bit of a facelift, too. The whole campus will get a new paint scheme that ties it all together, with new signs and a new, second grain silo being constructed on the front of the building to mirror the first that is already there.

Back behind the brewery they’ll build a new can warehouse, which will provide an additional 3,600 square feet of space for brewery storage. They’re not slowing down on what all this means for production. Things are going to keep growing for the brand, and this is all a big showcase of that.

Everything will be tied together by the volleyball courts, pedestrian spaces, and the beer garden right in the middle of campus, but as I started this all out with – the Bike Trail will be right there. It’s going to be easier than ever to hop on a bike from a lot of places around town, and make your way to Mariemont, to Fifty West and grab a beer.

What It All Means

It’s easy to see what an expansion like this can mean for a brewery like Fifty West. They roll things out slowly… taking their time to make sure that each decision is done the right way for them, and this could open up a new big floodgate for them in the same way that adding on the production brewery back in 2016 did. The brewery is poised to turn things up several notches as it all keeps coming to life.

In a little bit of a bigger sense – this is really going to be a fantastic expansion for Cincinnati’s bigger beer community. The idea that you can have a full brewery campus like this, right off a great bike trail is really something special. This is the sort of space that people talk about when they visit, that they take home with them in memories. We have several spots that people will tell their friends are “must visit” spots in Cincinnati and I think that this is solidifying Fifty West as one of those spots.

Of course… all of this is just my breaking down of things… you’re going to have to keep your eyes on Fifty West’s social media (like Facebook) I’m sure that I’ve only scratched the surface here and that once the news is “real” that they’ll showcase all of it in a much better light than I was able to.