Brought to you by WBIW News and Network Indiana
Last updated on Tuesday, August 19, 2014
(FISHERS) - The brewery that helped start the craft brew boom in Central Indiana is getting bigger.
Sun King will invest $8.8 million into a new brewery and tasting room in Fishers. Sun King will continue operating its downtown brewery and tasting room on College Avenue even as it builds just off I-69 at the corner of Kincaid Drive and Park Central Drive.
"Sun King has experienced tremendous growth in Indiana over the past five years, and it's important to us to be able to continue to make enough beer to serve the entire state," said Omar Robinson, president of Sun King Brewery, adding that they are almost brewing at capacity at the downtown location.
Sun King considered expanding downtown as well as on the northside of Indy and in Carmel before choosing Fishers.
"Available land, ease of access, many factors came into that decision," said Andy Fagg, Sun King's executive vice president of operations, and he said it largely came down to a survey of Sun King's customers. "Where our accounts do best and grow the fastest? Surveying people in the tasting room as to where they live and where else they would go to a tasting room."
The Fishers City Council is expected to consider a package of tax incentives for Sun King at its meeting tonight, but Fagg says they are not a condition of the new brewery.
"I think we could come up with financing from other avenues, but once we find out that one, we will know where we stand and go from there."
Sun King is Indiana's second-largest brewery, trailing only Three Floyds of Munster.
Sun King says the new Fishers location will employ around 20 people initially when it opens in July 2015 and up to 55 by 2019.
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