If you go down to the crossroads, fall down on your knees, as the old blues song goes, you'll be on the doorstep of a new Prince George brewery.
The intersection of Fifth Avenue and George Street will soon be the home of Crossroads craft beer factory. The principal owners of the venture, Daryl Leiski and Bjorn Butow, are giving new life to an old and interesting building that has been locked and abandoned for years. Crossroads Brewery will be the name on the sign replacing the Tony Roma's Steakhouse marquee.
Leiski and Butow said their renovations were about to begin but an official opening date has not been set. Leiski vaguely suggested December of this year, but wasn't firm. The renovation of the building and installation of the manufacturing equipment would be "expensive," said Leiski.
The investment amount would be "lots," he added as the only hint.
"Daryl's been making his own beer on a small scale, and slowly moving towards his dream of opening a brewery, for about 20 years," said Butow, who, as a longtime beer enthusiast, met Leiski one year ago this week, during the first edition of the Kiwanis Alefest event he helped organize. They became fast friends and over the year formed a business partnership.
Both men were raised in Prince George.
"We looked at a number of options, but Daryl and I really firmly agreed that downtown was where we wanted to be," said Butow, pointing up and down the adjacent streets at the fine restaurants nearby that their operation will soon complement. They plan to have a tasting room and lounge with tailored food service but not be a competing restaurant.
"Downtown has really been brought back to life, and we wanted to be part of that," said Butow.
Mayor Lyn Hall agreed, welcoming the new venture to one of the city's old character buildings that was going to commercial waste on historic George Street.
He loves that this building was originally constructed in 1945 to be an auto dealership by the city's 11th mayor Gordon Bryant and his wife Trudy.
"It was tough to keep this proposal under wraps," said Hall, relieved the brewery had finally been announced to the public after months of backroom preparations.
"This is a great announcement for the momentum of downtown. It's such an opportunity for two hometown guys to set an example of what can happen here with a business dream. We (at city hall) are absolutely ecstatic about this announcement."
The chair of Downtown Prince George was equally pleased, especially since his own business, Nancy O's Restaurant Pub, would be getting a number of new titles to sell on their menu only a few blocks away.
"It's really an exciting time for downtown and I'm glad to see these guys get in while the getting is good," Eoin Foley said.
Crossroads Brewery will, said Leiski, produce eight beer varieties on tap (growler containers will also be produced, and discussions are underway about canning and bottling ratios). Four or five of those labels will be year-round standards, the others would be seasonal and special occasion recipes. The company will offer a klsch flavour, a pair of Indian pale ale flavours, a red rye ale, and others are still being designed.
As this is Alefest weekend, Crossroads made their announcement to coincide with that annual celebration of beer, and for the upstart entrepreneurs to point grateful fingers at the other independent breweries of the region.
Butow and Leiski said they received overwhelming support from Pacific Western Brewery of Prince George, Barkerville Brewing Company of Quesnel, their fellow crafters in Prince Rupert and Terrace, and Three Ranges Brewing Company in Valemount even used their formative recipe to brew up a test batch that Butow and Leiski could pour for folks starting at a celebratory launch party on Thursday night at The Keg.
One thing they talked extensively about was the selection of the company name.
"It was like a couple choosing a baby name," Butow laughed.
They settled on Crossroads because of the literal meeting of major highways in this city, the confluence of the Nechako and Fraser rivers, the junction of the region's rail lines, and all those well-known conjunctive features that defines Prince George.
Leiski said it gave the beer world a pinpoint mental image of where their company was located.
Butow added that the Crossroads reference also pertained to arriving at a place in your life where you have to make big choices.
He and Leiski are both professionals with full-time jobs, so opening a small business of any kind was a leap of faith no matter how calculated it was - exciting but scary.
