The Penn Brewery, the first craft brewer in Pennsylvania, is bottling up its remaining vats of beer and canning employees after announcing that the brewery will be closing its North Side location as it seeks a new home.
Penn’s reign at the historic Eberhardt and Ober Brewery, which was originally opened in 1848, will come to an end when the lease expires in February.
The reason for the move is a rent increase of 360 percent, according to Len Caric, president and CEO of the Penn Brewery.
Tom Pastorius, the founder of the Penn Brewery and former president, restored the Eberhardt and Ober Brewery in the 1980s. Pastorius was able to secure the location for Pittsburgh’s first microbrewery with assistance from the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh and a private partnership.
E&O Partners, named for the building, is the current ownership group seeking the rent increase. Caric called the increase “substantially higher” compared to previous rent increases and decided it was time to leave.
“We got thrown into a bad situation,” Caric said. “It’s unfortunate. There’s a lot of collateral damage, but nevertheless we’ve got to keep moving forward.”
The announcement, made in mid-November, came as a shock to employees who were called into a meeting, which they said they thought would just be a pep talk.
“Not even the general manager knew about it until half an hour before the meeting,” Nikki Robinson, a waitress at Penn’s restaurant, said.
Robinson is one of the 48 workers currently employed at the brewery. According to an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, eight of the 10 brewery employees would be laid off, along with nearly 30 restaurant employees.
Yet, even with the drop in Penn’s available workforce and the hunt for a new location, Caric has plans for expansion.
In an article published by the Pittsburgh Business Times in November, Caric expects Penn to make an important decision on how to increase its production of 12,000 barrels annually by 50 percent within the next six months.
