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Cornelius News

D9 will expand into Uptown Charlotte

D9’s DURSTEWITZ

By Katie Piccirillo Sherman. Cornelius-based D9 Brewing will open an outdoor brewery with a beer garden and concert pavilion on Stonewall Street in Charlotte this summer. D9, founded by two engineers and a doctor, opened their popular Lake Norman brewery in 2014,

The outfit has also registered D9 Brewing NoDa with the NC Secretary of State, suggesting the brewery will continue to expand in Charlotte. Following the successful opening of a larger taproom in Cornelius last fall, expanding into an urban market replete with Millennials is a powerful strategic move.

D9’s Andrew Durstewitz did not return phone calls for this story, but in a 2018 interview he said: “We’re getting to the point where our brands are preceding the company, so people are looking for our beer.”

Craft beer continues to grow and thrive. Retail sales of craft beer rose 7 percent in 2018, bringing in $27.58 billion. USA Today said microbrewers account for nearly 25 percent of the $114.2 billion U.S. beer market.

D9 Brewery will have plenty of competition within the Charlotte region with 30 local microbreweries occupying some 400,000 square feet of retail space. The new location Uptown is next to the luxury Savoy apartment complex on Stonewall.

If D9 heads into NoDa, which already has Birdsong Brewing, NoDa Brewing Co., Heist Brewery and Bold Missy Brewery, it may help increase business for everyone, according to economic developers.

Craft brewing attracts other businesses and creates jobs and economic success stories.

Microbrewers are a “target industry” for the Lake Norman Economic Development Corp. Lake Norman is home to a half-dozen craft brewers with additional production coming to the area in the next few years. Brewers are like yeast around tax base and visitor spending.  And jobs: 10,000 in North Carolina at last count.

Ryan McDaniels, CEO of the economic development corporation, said the state’s 200 craft breweries pump more than $1 billion into the economy annually. A decade ago, there were but two dozen statewide so the growth trend is obvious.

Eleven Lakes Brewery is a success story in Hyde Park Storage Suites less than a mile from D9 on Bailey Road.

Ass Clown Brewery has also established a regular following with a wide variety of craft brews in Huntersville. Meanwhile, Olde Mecklenburg Brewery says it will begin building a complex at the old Curtis Screw factory on Zion, just north and east of downtown Cornelius later this year.