Small City Brewing breaks ground on new Ogdensburg taproom project

Small City Brewing is making a bigger bet than a simple brewhouse on Ogdensburg’s waterfront. The company broke ground on a plan to turn a vacant 4,700-square-foot warehouse at 110 Lake Street into a craft brewery, tasting room, restaurant-bar and event space, with outdoor seating and a commercial-grade five-barrel brewing system at the center of the buildout.

That mix of beer, hospitality and events is what makes the project stand out. The nearly $1.4 million redevelopment also calls for a 400-square-foot grain room and a commercial kitchen, a layout that pushes the business well beyond packaged beer alone and into the revenue streams that can keep a small downtown destination busy year-round. In a market where a taproom has to do more than pour pints, Small City is building for food, gatherings and on-site sales from the start.

Empire State Development said the project was awarded $914,335 in Restore New York IX grant funding, part of a program aimed at helping municipalities redevelop vacant, abandoned, condemned and surplus properties. City planning records described the financing as approximately $1 million in Restore NY money and $160,000 in private funding, underscoring how the public and private pieces were stitched together to make the deal work. The brewery is also intended to activate a long-vacant waterfront property and help erase blight in the Marina District.

For Ogdensburg, the project carries more weight than a typical brewery opening. Officials have said the city is the only place in Ogdensburg with a brewery and one of only a few in St. Lawrence County, which gives the launch outsized importance for tourism and neighborhood identity. Mayor Michael Tooley said the work advances the Marina District’s development into a tourism destination, while Small City partner Bill Hosmer said the investment is meant to strengthen the community and drive visitors.

The paper trail behind the project goes back further than the groundbreaking. Small City Brewing Company, LLC was initially filed in New York on January 4, 2022, with William D. Hosmer listed as the process contact, and local reporting said the city agreed to serve as lead agency on the project in October. Hosmer also used support from the City of Ogdensburg Planning Office, the Ogdensburg Growth Fund, the Small Business Development Center, the Industrial Development Agency and Empire State Development to move the redevelopment forward.

When the doors finally open in spring or summer 2027, the real story will not just be the beer coming out of 110 Lake Street. It will be whether a small-city brewery can survive by building a taproom, a restaurant and an event business around the brewhouse, and whether that is now the most realistic route to downtown revival.