How to Kill a Small Business

[TexasTowelie]

How Dallas’s permitting problems nearly spelled doom for Community Beer Co., one of the city’s most successful brewers.


One afternoon in late June, Kevin Carr peels off a neon reflective vest and sinks into an office chair. The building is damp and hot and hasn’t been touched for years. Carpet in the hallway feels like walking on a sponge. He sets his hard hat on a desk and apologizes. This should have been a very different conversation.

Carr is a Dallas success story. He took a home-brewing hobby from his garage to a 14,000-square-foot warehouse. He called it Community Beer Co., packaging it with philanthropic efforts that have raised money for people with multiple sclerosis and organized volunteers to fix burst pipes after the state’s power grid failed. “We’re named Community for a reason,” he says. “We try to do those things.”

In 2011, he was one of the pioneers who navigated a byzantine city bureaucracy that had no idea how to accommodate a commercial brewing operation. In the years since, the craft beer industry has thrived, thanks in part to stubborn entrepreneurs like him. By 2020, Community had become the third-largest independent brewer in Texas.

When the company outgrew its space in the Design District, Carr was ready. He had plans to transform a pair of nearby old warehouses off Interstate 35. Community brewed a three-month supply of beer, enough to keep taps flowing and shelves stocked while Carr installed equipment in the warehouses and got his yeast working again. He began filing permits in September 2020, with designs calling for an outdoor biergarten with a stage, a two-story taproom, a restaurant, a private event space, offices, and enough room to both boost beer production and start distilling spirits.

Read more: https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2021/october/community-beer-dallas-permitting-problems/?ref=feat-hp

[msongs]

1. summary - government permitting processes and red tape nt

[Javaman]

2. not really...

this has nothing to do with permitting and red tape.

this has everything to do with the city of dallas underfunding their permitting office and not updating the software needed to process permits.

We have a building boom here in Austin. I work in the architecture/construction industry and my neighbor owns his own brewery.

I know from personal experience, that the permitting office here in Austin is very efficient.

so the excuse of red tape and the permitting process falls very short of the actual problem: shitty tech.