Expansion to Pier 48 awaits Giants’ move

The purchase of homegrown Anchor Brewing by Japanese beverage giant Sapporo Group comes while Anchor’s plans to expand on the San Francisco waterfront are hazier than an unfiltered IPA.

In 2013, the Potrero Hill brewer announced it would open a second facility within historic Pier 48, just south of Mission Creek, as part of a larger development by the San Francisco Giants. There was talk of 200 employees spread across three production shifts, accompanied by a museum and restaurant and public tours emphasizing Anchor and its heritage.

Since then, the target opening date of 2016 has come and gone. Anchor and the Giants earlier this year said changes to Pier 48 would wait until later stages of the team’s development plans, which include residential towers and commercial buildings on what now are parking lots serving AT&T Park.

“We’ve put a lot of thought and effort into how this might work,” a planner with the Port of San Francisco said in February, “and there’s still a hope that it will happen.”

Privately, people familiar with the effort said Anchor was stymied by the economics of a seismic upgrade to the 6-acre pier and its 180,000 square feet of industrial spaces, which are tucked behind a pair of bulkhead buildings from 1929. There’s increased competition within the world of craft brewing, and Anchor instead has put resources into upgrading its plant on Potrero Hill.

The Giants in February submitted an environmental study of their project, which the team calls Mission Rock.

With regard to Pier 48, the study includes conceptual designs for a renovated pier with a new public walkway around the outer edge, or apron. Within the aged sheds, “the proposed industrial use, specifically analyzed as a proposed brewery use, would construct production facilities for brewing, distilling, packaging, storing and shipping product, in addition to establishing a brewing-related museum and a restaurant.”

Those plans were dated 2015.