Mission Brewery Lives Up to Its Name Again

The smell of malted barley, yeast and freshly brewed beer once again wafts through the 76-year-old brick and stucco building at 1751 Hancock St.

Mission Brewery is back in business at the landmark building, just west of Interstate 5 at Washington Street, after 70 years.

And, once again, cooling air flows through the building’s 65-foot tower as part of the brewing process. Over the years, offices were added around what had originally been designed specifically as a brewery cooling tower, and the cupola atop the tower was replaced with a roof. The tower is now ventilated by gusts of wind that blow through the 15 windows around the 18-foot-tall room at the tower’s top. Ironically, it was a law that put the old Mission Brewery out of business and a law that helped put the new brewery in business.

The old brewery shut down in 1919, on the eve of national Prohibition. The new micro-brewery at the building is the result of a recent federal law that paved the way for small breweries that make beer for local sale.

After the start of Prohibition, the building was bought by American Agar & Chemical Co. The room at the top of the tower was used as a laboratory by the company, which processed agar, a chemical that is sometimes used in brewing beer, from seaweed.

The return of the brewery to the building got a boost last year when San Diego voters approved Proposition L, which allows an exemption to a height-limit rule in the restoration of the brewery’s chimney and tower cupola.

The building is now now undergoing a multimillion-dollar face lift that will convert it into a mixed-use complex that will include offices, retail space, a restaurant, parking, and the micro-brewery that is already turning out a heady brew.

Foote Development, the firm restoring the 1913 building, hopes to have the project, named Mission Brewery Plaza, finished by November.

The restoration is being monitored by the State Historic Board, according to Will Johnson, executive vice president of Foote Development.

The building is also being considered by the State Historic Resources Commission, which will decide whether to nominate if for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, according to Marilyn Bourne Lourtie, a historian at the State Office of Historical Preservation.

If a building is listed among the more than 1,000 buildings in the National Register, its owners often gain flexibility in meeting state building codes and some tax credits, she said.

Mission Brewery meets guidelines set by the board because of its mission revival style of architecture and has an excellent chance of being accepted into the register, Lourtie said.

The building will undergo few structural changes in the restoration, Becker said.

The main work will be done on the brick inside the building, out of public view, Becker said.