A family-run startup and a property developer took a step toward building a distillery near the Surly Brewing Co. in the Prospect Park neighborhood of Minneapolis.
Cousins Michael and Patrick O'Shaughnessy and the Wall Cos. submitted site plans for the O'Shaughnessy Distillery to city planners ahead of a committee meeting next Thursday.
The plans show a 27,000-square-foot building surrounded by several outdoor seating areas and a 122-space parking lot.
The building will be on Malcolm Avenue SE. on the back side of the Surly brewery. It will be next to grain silos that are on the west side of the Surly property and across the street from a wall-climbing center that Wall previously announced. The firm is also developing a mixed-use project called Malcolm Yards that includes a food hall and grocery.
The O'Shaughnessy cousins plan to make potato-based vodka, American bourbon, American and Irish gin, rum, Irish-style liqueurs and an Irish single-malt whiskey in the plant, according to documents filed with city planners.
The project will rehabilitate an existing three-story building that dates to 1945 and was used as a potato processing facility.
The brothers plan to turn that building into a cocktail lounge that customers would experience at the end of tours of the distillery.
The existing building's brick exterior will be updated and a large boarded-up portion of one wall will be replaced with glass. The rest of the facility will consist of two structures of mixed wood, glass and concrete materials.
"The composition of the three simple forms and landscape blend seamlessly with their neighbor to the south, Surly, and the proposed Midwest Climbing building to the west," the firms said in the planning document. "The collection of these modest buildings all take cues from the industrial history of the area the existing grain silos remind us of today."
The project needs city planners to approve a variance for the sizable parking lot.
The cousins and developers disclosed the plans to neighborhood residents at a meeting in March.
Evan Ramstad • 612-673-4241
