CIDEways Tap Room + Cidery coming soon. Also, an Elks Lodge 270 facade improvement.

Photo credit: 502 Brews. 

I'm shamelessly cribbing this one from Develop New Albany's e-newsletter.

As a "CIDE" note, in addition to Matt's visible work toward refurbishing his Market & Pearl corner property, Elks Lodge 270 immediately adjacent soon will begin a facade enhancement project, replacing the current white "decorative" front (even lodge members routinely refer to it as ugly; see photo above) with bricks in a much better arrangement. It will be more in keeping with the original lodge, which was vastly reconfigured after a catastrophic fire in the early 1960s.

In short, the perimeter expands. Got that wine license yet, Matt?

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CIDEways Tap Room + Cidery Coming this Summer

The Horseshoe Foundation Revolving Loan Fund announced recently that restaurateur Matt McMahan is the first recipient of a revolving loan for 2016. McMahan will open the CIDEways Tap Room + Cidery, a casual dining restaurant located at the corner of Pearl and East Elm Streets next to the New Albany Elks Lodge in New Albany.

The $50,000 loan awarded to McMahan will be used to build a full kitchen in the building (hood, fryers, stoves, etc.), as well as equipment to make cider. Renovations on the new location will continue, including the addition of outdoor street seating. This is the second Horseshoe Foundation revolving loan received by McMahan; the first being used to open the Big Four Burgers + Beer in New Albany.

CIDEways will be quite different from Big Four Burgers + Beer, CIDEways will offer a wide variety of beers and wines as well as the specialty hard cider. McMahan estimates the new location will have 18 beers on tap, with an additional 60 brands of bottled beer.

CIDEways is scheduled to open by the summer of 2016 and be available to diners seven days a week from 11:00 a.m. to midnight.

New cidery downtown? Two-way streets would make Matt's business idea far more feasible.

Photo credit: Kevin Gibson.

Q: What do you get for keeping secrets?

A: Scooped.

Grr. That's twice in a week, but hey -- I'm happy to forward good news whatever the source. First, let's look at cider, and then conjecture how a functional civic economic development effort might transform this project into a better investment.

Big Four Burgers owner planning to open craft cidery in 2016, by Kevin Gibson (In-cider Louisville)

Downtown New Albany already has a pair of breweries and a winery to go with its many restaurants. Sometime in early 2016, the Southern Indiana city will add a craft cidery to that mix.

Matt McMahan, owner of Big Four Burgers + Beer, says the project is only just under way, but he hopes that by spring, the 9,000-square-foot space at 432 Pearl St. will be a place where people can come in for a good meal paired with cider.

Cider in America has come full circle, and is a growth category.

A popular alcoholic beverage from Colonial times until Prohibition, cider has begun to regain widespread recognition in recent years, with the largest beer companies releasing ciders to catch up to the growth. In fact, cider is now the fastest-growing alcoholic beverage, up more than 75.4 percent last year, according to market research firm IRI.

One of Matt's biggest issues will be navigating the thicket of state regulations.

The future cidery doesn’t even have a name yet, and McMahan says he is researching what kinds of permits will be needed to make cider in New Albany, given that cider is somewhere between beer and wine in the eyes of the law.

To make cider, I believe he'll need a farm winery license; cider for production is considered wine for regulatory purposes, although the excise tax levied is that of beer, or some such persistent nonsense.

If the cidery intends to sell alcoholic beverages other than the cider it makes, there must be a retail permit, and while it can be done, there are more regulatory obstacles in Indiana for small wineries than small breweries when it comes to the front of the house.

He'll get it done, through it won't be made easy for him.

Another impediment to ideal outcomes at the southeast corner of Elm and Pearl is dysfunctional street design, with high-speed Elm and Pearl both (still) one-way streets in defiance of experience throughout the globe.

As the following excerpts from Jeff Speck's Downtown Street Network Proposal clearly illustrate, one-way streets work AGAINST a business like the one Matt is planning to open.

The enduringly limited conceptual comprehension of a relative handful of downtown stakeholders notwithstanding, one-way streets act as a "convenient framework for making limited profit."

Which means that an ongoing failure to design streets correctly acts as a local government profit inhibitor, and an investment value reducer. Some businesses are doing okay, but it could be better.

As it stands, the city provides almost no assistance to entrepreneurs like Matt.

But if two-way streets offered a framework for making greater profits over a huge expanse of commercial ground, wouldn't a rational street grid be the BEST way the city might help? 

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