Mill brewery, housing work on track
Owner: Frog Alley to open in March, rest of project by late spring
Schenectady A pinkish-toned cherry wheat beer caught Congressman Paul Tonko’s attention while he sipped different samples of brew Friday afternoon in Frog Alley Brewing’s Schenectady taproom.
Tonko — who favored the wheat beer over other hopheavy IPA samples — toured the six-story, multi-use facility still under construction at 108 State Street in downtown Schenectady alongside brewery owner and local businessman JT Pollard.
Pollard said the site is on track to be completed sometime in late spring, nearly three years after the idea for the project was first conceived.
“This building, as I used to drive by it, it was my least favorite building in the city,” Pollard said. “I always hated it, and when I had the opportunity to take it out of foreclosure, I did it.”
The $30 million project, which will feature the brewery along with 74 apartments and several retail spaces, is expected to be a major economic driver in an area that has seen significant redevelopment in recent years.
“It’s great to see that revitalization, that come-back scenario” for Schenectady, Tonko said. “The millennial trend is to come into cities to live, work and recreate in those locations. And so this is keeping with those ideas. It’s keeping with that thinking.”
The brewery has a temporary taproom along Ferry Street with a dozen tables that’s open Thursdays through Sundays while the rest of the site is under construction. But the brewery’s 6,000-square-foot taproom at the corner of Ferry and State streets will open March 16.
That taproom will feature an outdoor patio and is surrounded in glass, giving patrons a topdown view of the brewery a floor
below. Pollard said Bountiful Bread, the Albany-based bakery and cafe, will serve items like wood-fired pizza through a pick-up window in the taproom.
Pollard also said Bountiful Bread will be moving its entire baking operation to the location from Stuyvesant Plaza.
Other tenants in the building will include a barbecue restaurant that Schenectady restaurateur Tim Trier will open, as well as the Jahnel Group, a software development firm that’s leasing 17,000 square feet of office space on the building’s top floor, Pollard said.
“We thought a brewery would be good idea down here to help revitalize the area, provide people a fun place to go. But it’s also a true manufacturing facility in an urban fabric,” Pollard said, noting that the brewery will produce around 1,200 kegs of beer every two weeks, and has a bottling operation as well.
A 2,000-square-foot space next to the taproom will feature classrooms for students in Schenectady County Community College’s brewing and culinary education program, and the brew house will also host an incubator program for startup brewers.
“We’ll have these five shipping containers that we have set up as bars, they each have eight taps in them. You can brew your beer on-site under the guidance of our brewers,” Pollard said. “And then have your product available to sell, to market, to start to put a program together for yourself.”
Pollard said applications haven’t opened yet for the apartments, but he expects them to gradually “go online” as construction wraps up. The apartments are largely one-bedroom and studio apartments, except for a handful of two-bedroom units.
Both Tonko and Pollard heralded the development of the location that connects the community college with the revitalized area surrounding Proctors theater and downtown Schenectady.
“Come to downtown Schenectady, have a beer and help us rebuild Schenectady,” Pollard said.
And while you’re at it, Tonko recommends the Frog Alley cherry wheat beer — not too sweet, not too bitter, he said.