Mequon brewery-centered development wins approval
A plan to create two Mequon craft breweries and other commercial buildings, as well as housing, has received its first city approvals.
If it obtains financing, the Foxtown mixed-use project would transform an area south of W. Mequon Road, between N. Buntrock Ave. and the railroad tracks. It’s now mainly a collection of underused warehouses and vacant lots.
The Mequon Plan Commission on Monday night recommended rezoning the site and approving a concept plan for the development, said Jac Zader, assistant community development director. Those actions, as well as future detailed plans, will need Common Council approval.
The Foxtown proposal includes:
Converting a 19thcentury former brewery building, 6411 W. Mequon Road, into a 6,800-squarefoot restaurant and beer hall known as Foxtown Brewery. That building once was home to the Opitz and Zimmermann Brewery and was later used for other industrial purposes.
It was sold in 2015 to Mequon Brewing Co., led by Thomas Nieman, president of Mequon-based pet food maker Fromm Family Foods LLC.
“I believe they want to start renovations on the brewery within the next few months,” Zader said Tuesday.
Building the separate 13,100-square-foot Fox Yard Brewery in a converted industrial building along the railroad tracks, east of Industrial Drive.
Nieman last year pitched a brewery as part of a 105,000-square-foot building in Mequon Business Park that would have included Fromm’s new headquarters. That plan was later dropped.
Constructing four additional office and retail buildings, with a two-story building east of the restaurant, along Mequon Road, and a two-story building and a pair of three-story buildings in the middle of the site.
Those three-story buildings would each include 11 apartments on the top floors.
Constructing around 100 luxury apartments in a pair of three-story buildings, and 23 lots for singlefamily houses. Those residential uses would be on the site’s southern portion.
Nieman is working with apartment developer P2 Development Co. and home builder Lakeside Development Co. on Foxtown.