Brewing Success in Rockport, Texas: Navigating Zoning Challenges and Community Support
Brewing Success in Rockport, Texas: Navigating Zoning Challenges and Community Support July 17 – Sept 14, 2023Diedra Amaya So, we want to open a brewery in our own hometown, Rockport, Texas! Where do we start? Webegan by reaching out to the appropriate channels, including Rockport’s City Planner, CareyDietrich, to coordinate a Pre-Development Meeting with the Building & DevelopmentDepartment and a representative from other involved departments. We prepared a briefpresentation outlining our intentions regarding size, operating hours, offerings, and goals forreview beforehand. We also provided several hard copies of our business plan for theapproximately 12 representatives at the meeting to review. During the meeting, we discussed afew properties we were considering and received valuable feedback from local experts to guideour search for a suitable brewery location. We also delved into specific information related torecent challenges and estimated costs for plumbing, sewer, water installation, parking, andvarious permits. It was determined by the city that our brewery would fall under the “light industrial, L-1” zoningcategory. This posed a significant challenge for us as there were limited properties availablewith this zoning designation that met our minimum requirements. While we explored options inFulton, which had more favorable zoning for our purpose, our loyalty as Rockport residents andour commitment to our slogan, “Make Rockport Brewtiful,” led us to pursue opening our brewerywithin the city limits of Rockport. Still exploring our options, we raised the possibility of the heritage district. The city reminded methat we would not be able to obtain zoning approval for this area. A Brewery is considered to beg, therefore we would need to be covered light industrial. In this context, we also inquired aboutDog’gon Brewery’s permitting approval process. It struck me as interesting that the city hadn’tconsidered the existing brewery or that they were surprised we had a comparison business? We also want to take this opportunity to mention the camaraderie between craft breweries to ourBay Area Brewing Company (TX BABCO) followers. We hope to share our passion withoutcompeting against other breweries. We will have many opportunities to collaborate. Now, backto our primary concern: location. The city assured us that they would look into the permittingapprovals for Dog’gon Brewery in the heritage district, and we left the meeting with a wealth ofknowledge and a list of contacts who were enthusiastic about our vision. After a few weeks, we followed up with the city multiple times to inquire about permitting for thebrewery in the heritage district. We came across a couple of recent articles that related to oursituation in other small Texas communities, where those cities had expanded zoning to B1Commercial for breweries. We mentioned a couple of new locations we was negotiating withproperty owners to lease and incorporated some information from these articles. We waitedanxiously for a response. Then, on Thursday, September 14, we received a determination: The City of Rockport isworking with us! I am immensely grateful for having asked the right questions, as the citylistened and diligently carried out their responsibilities. Everyone, can you say “Winning!”Now we have so many options! What is out there that we don’t even know about? Location,location, location…
