Roxborough warehouse offered rent-free for virus response before beginning new life as craft brewery

The owners of a soon-to-be microbrew pub and beer warehouse in Roxborough have an offer for potential tenants involved in the coronavirus response: free rent for at least two months.

Bryn Mawr-based Alliance Partners HSP told city officials that it is looking for organizations that can benefit from its 130,000 square feet of newly renovated space at 401 Domino Lane before its future full-time tenant, Boston-based Night Shift Brewing, begins its lease in May.

“Industrial real estate across the country is in high demand, and we happen to have a well-located warehouse that is unoccupied until the end of May,” said Rich Previdi, an Alliance HSP managing partner.

The property has a large parking lot, which could make it useful as a coronavirus testing location, or it could come in handy for users such as hospitals that are having trouble storing large quantities of supplies, such as masks, that are needed for their pandemic responses, according to Matt Handel, a vice president with the company.

Philadelphia officials have passed the company’s offer along to the city’s Office of Emergency Management, Handel said.

The property, on Domino Lane west of Ridge Avenue, had been occupied by Penn Beer until early 2019, when the beer wholesaler consolidated those operations at a facility in Hatfield, Montgomery County.

Alliance HSP bought the warehouse in 2018, shortly before Penn Beer’s departure, and signed a lease for the space with Night Shift Brewing about seven months later.

Night Shift’s plan for the property includes a brewery capable of eventually producing 300,000 barrels of beer annually, along with a 3,800-square-foot taproom with seating for 300 people, a covered outdoor beer garden, and warehouse space from which to distribute its products throughout the region.

Alliance HSP has spent the time since Penn Beer’s departure completing updates and repairs to the property, including installing a new roof and renovating its parking lot, Handel said.

While Night Shift will begin fitting out the space for brewery operations when its lease begins in May, its owners say they may be willing to continue accommodating coronavirus-relief uses in some parts of the building, Handel said.

The brewery plans to open before the end of 2020, the Inquirer reported in August.

Alliance HSP’s other Philadelphia properties include the former Destination Maternity warehouse at Fifth and Spring Garden Streets, now home to Yards Brewing Co. and a Target Corp. store, and the Frankford Arsenal, a onetime munitions factory in the city’s Bridesburg section that now hosts light-industrial tenants.