Brewery, rock climbing course among plans for Cooperage site

Resurgence Brewing Company is opening a new location at 55 Ohio Street in Buffalo's Old First Ward. The brewery joins Central Rock Gym, a rock climbing chain, as two of the main tenants secured for the project by Ellicott Development.

The developer is finalizing terms with a distillery specializing in barrel-aged spirits and has an available retail space to round out commercial properties at the site. It will also feature ten apartments.

Site work and demolition is set to begin in the next two weeks and the entire project should be "tenant ready" by the end of summer or early fall, according to Ellicott Development.

"We wanted to stay in the city and continue the vision of revitalizing neighborhoods and rebuilding old structures and bringing things back to life," Jeff Ware, president of Resurgence Brewing, explained. "Letting people get into them and explore them and appreciate them for what they were."

The Ohio St. brewery will be Resurgence Brewing Co.'s second location, joining the current brewery and taproom at 1250 Niagara Street.

The larger location on Ohio St. will allow Resurgence to increase its daily beer production from around 3,000 barrels to 30,000 barrels.

The Niagara St. location will remain open and focus on research and development for new beers. Ohio St. will be where the most popular beers are brewed and packaged to keep up with the growing demand.

"Focus on our small batch, creative brewing here," Ware said. "So Niagara Street is going to be where we're developing the next great beer. And Ohio Street is really going to be more about creating that beer and distributing it across the region."