TAPPING INTO SUCCESS
Prairie Artisan Ales heads to downtown Edmond in deal with city
EDMOND — Cheers, Edmond! Another brewery and taproom are headed downtown, and city leaders say the more the merrier.
The Edmond Council approved a new Prairie Artisan Ales location at city-owned Festival Market Place, 26 W First St., in an agreement with Edmond native Brandon Lodge’s Lap 7 Development LLC as a development partner with the Edmond Economic Development Authority.
Prairie Artisan Ale, owned and operated by fourthgeneration Oklahoma brewer Zach Prichard, will be the third taproom and brewery in Edmond’s booming downtown, one leg of an “ale trail,” city planners said, along with American Solera Edmond, at 129 W Second, Frenzy Brewing Co. at 15 S Broadway Ave., and The Patriarch Craft Beer House & Lawn, at 9 E Edwards St.
“This is my town. I grew up here. It’s very personal to me,” Lodge told the council at its meeting Monday evening. His career took him away and when he returned, he said, what he found happening downtown “blew my mind.”
Downtown Edmond, he said, “is the hottest district in the metro area, which is shocking to say.” The heat, he noted, is being brought by local developers and businesses, not by chains, and not as part of a strip center.
Lodge was lead developer of 8th Street Market at 3 NE 8 in downtown Oklahoma City, the city’s first urban “market hall,” which is also home to a Prairie Artisan Ale taproom and brewery. Prairie Artisan also distributes beer and ale nationally and overseas. Lodge also developed The Icehouse Project at 109 W Second in Edmond.
“Lap 7 Development will construct a 4,200 squarefoot taproom and brewery and Prairie will bring its award-winning recipes and national name to the burgeoning area,” city staff told the council.
The new project in Edmond, on a ground lease from the city, is the result of a coordinated push by the city and Edmond Economic Development Authority to capitalize on the boom already underway and enhance it.
City planners and the authority were “interested in further activating the Festival Market Place in downtown to help accomplish the vision of the Downtown Master Plan which is a ‘healthy, vibrant walkable urban neighborhood full of people living, working, eating, playing, shopping, and learning,” city staff said in information given to the council.
Prairie Artisan Ales “will add to the dynamic atmosphere being created in downtown Edmond,” said Janet Yowell, executive director of the development authority.
Lap 7 Development was one of two responders to the city’s Request for Qualifications for developing 5,000 square feet of the 102,000-square-foot Festival Market Place, now a storage building, on a ground lease.
Two city staff, along with Yowell, director of the authority; Stephanie Carel, executive director of the Downtown Edmond Business Association; and Jason Duncan, chairman of the Central Edmond Urban District Board, selected Lap 7 Development to begin negotiating the terms of a ground lease.
The lease is effective immediately, but the term begins Nov. 1. Lap 7 has until Jan. 1, 2024 to begin construction and then a year to complete it.
● Term: Initial term is 25 years with five separate five-year options that can be exercised through mutual agreement.
● Lease rate: $12,750 annual rent for the first five years, increasing 10% with each five-year extension.
● The building will cost a minimum of $1,000,000 with a minimum of $250,000 in equipment or personal property.
● Construction shall not negatively impact the operation of the Farmer’s Market.
● Before commencing construction, Lap 7 must execute a sublease with Prairie Artisan Ales.
● Lap 7 may not sell, convey, transfer or assign all or any portion of its interest in the lease without the city’s consent.